Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. It was established in 1965 and presently has more than 28,000 students. The university was named after Simon Fraser, a North West Company fur trader and explorer.
Undergraduate and graduate programs operate on a year-round tri-semester schedule. The campus was noted in the 1960s and early 1970s as a hotbed of political activism, culminating in a crisis in the Department of Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology in a dispute involving ideological differences among faculty. The resolution to the crisis included the dismantling of the department and its breaking-up into today's separate departments. The university press, The Peak, is a member of CUP.
SFU is ranked 1st in Canada’s top Comprehensive Universities in 2008's Macleans Magazine, ranked 62nd in the world.
Founding
Simon Fraser University was founded upon the recommendation by a 1958 a report entitled Higher Education in British Columbia and a Plan for the Future, by Dr. J.B. Macdonald, who recommended the creation of a new university in the Lower Mainland. The British Columbia Legislature gave formal assent two months later for the establishment of the university. In May of the same year Dr. Gordon M. Shrum was appointed as the university's first Chancellor. From a variety of sites which were offered, Shrum recommended to the Provincial Government that the peak of Burnaby Mountain be chosen for the new university. Architects Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey won a competition to design the university, and construction began in the spring of 1964. Eighteen months later, on September 9, 1965, the university began its first semester with 2,500 students.
The school's original coat of arms was used from the university's inception until 2006, at which point the Board of Governors voted to adapt the old coat of arms and thereby register a second coat of arms. The adaptation replaced two crosslets with books after some in the university asserted the crosses had misled prospective foreign students into believing SFU was a private, religious institution rather than a public, secular one. In 2007, the university decided to register both the old coat of arms and the revised coat of arms featuring the books. In 2007, a new marketing logo was unveiled, consisting of white letters on block red.
Campuses
Simon Fraser University has three campuses, each located in different parts of the Lower Mainland. SFU's main campus is located in Burnaby, atop Burnaby Mountain. Two satellite campuses are located in Vancouver's Downtown at Harbour Centre, and in Surrey. The downtown campus has expanded to include several other buildings in recent years, including the Segal Graduate School of Business, now known officially as SFU Vancouver.
Academics
SFU has been rated as Canada's best comprehensive university (in 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2008) in the annual rankings of Canadian universities in Maclean's magazine and has consistently placed at or near the top of the publication's national evaluations. Research Infosource, Canada’s leading provider of research intelligence evaluation, named SFU the top comprehensive university in Canada for “publication effectiveness” in 2006. Similar to most Canadian universities, SFU is a public university, with more than half of funding coming from taxpayers and the remaining from tuition fees. The university's faculties are divided into six areas:Applied Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences, Business Administration, Education, Health Sciences, and Science.
Undergraduate
SFU is home to over 25,000 undergraduates and 3,198 graduate students. The university has grown in recent years recently achieving an alumni population of over 100,000. It has 911 faculty members and 3,403 staff. International students make up 7% of its student body. (University Community Report (2006/2007)). SFU's student union is known as the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS), which includes undergraduates who study at SFU.
Instructor
Teaching Assistants, Tutor Markers, Sessional Instructors, and Language Instructors at SFU are unionized. The union, The Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU), is independent. Faculty and lecturers are members of the Faculty Association. Staff are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Administrative and Professional Staff Association (APSA), or Polyparty. A few positions at the university such as some in Human Resources and senior administrative positions fall outside of the five associations or unions above.
Research and Affiliations
SFU also works with other universities and agencies to operate joint research facilities. These include Bamfield Marine Station, a major centre for teaching and research in marine biology; TRIUMF, a powerful cyclotron used in subatomic physics and chemistry research; MITACS, headquarters of this Network of Centres of Excellence for 26 universities and 75 companies. SFU is also a partner institution in Great Northern Way Campus Ltd in Vancouver. In March 2006, SFU approved an affiliation agreement with a private college for international students to be housed adjacent to its Burnaby campus. This new college named Fraser International College is now open in the Multi Tenant Facility located in Discovery Parks Trust SFU site
Faculties
- Faculty of Applied Sciences
- Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
- Faculty of Business Administration
- Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology
- Faculty of Education
- Faculty of Environment
- Faculty of Health Sciences
- Faculty of Science Distance EducationCo-operative Education Continuing StudiesGraduate Studies
Simon Fraser University was ranked 164th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking
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