University of Calgary

The Ranking of University of Calgary, Canada

www.ucalgary.ca

The University of Calgary is a research-intensive public university in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University is composed of 24,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students.

Initially, the university was the Calgary Branch of the University of Alberta. In the first half of the 20th century, the University of Calgary separated from the University of Alberta, and was founded in 1966. The University of Calgary, or "U of C", is composed of 16 faculties including a teachers' college, law school, and medical school. In 2008 the University of Calgary opened a veterinary school bringing the number of faculties to 17. The campus is in the north-west quadrant of Calgary.

The University of Calgary is one of the top research-intensive universities in Canada with seventh most Canada Research Chairs. It is a member of the G13 (Group of Thirteen), Association of Commonwealth Universities, International Association of Universities, and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. The university has a sponsored research revenue of $282 million, with total revenues exceeding $800 million. Being in Calgary, with Canada's highest concentration of engineers and geoscientists, both the Faculty of Science, Department of Geosciences and the Schulich School of Engineering maintain ties to the petroleum and geoscience industry.

History

University of Calgary is a non-denominational institution established in 1966, when an existing college, the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta gained autonomy as a university. The Calgary branch of the University of Alberta was founded in 1945. The University of Calgary has developed a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs.

University of Alberta a single, public provincial university created in 1906 was modelled on the American state university, with an emphasis on extension work and applied research. The governance was modelled on the provincial University of Toronto Act of 1906 which established a bicameral system of university government consisting of a senate (faculty), responsible for academic policy, and a board of governors (citizens) exercising exclusive control over financial policy and having formal authority in all other matters. The president, appointed by the board, was a link between the bodies to perform institutional leadership. In the early 20th century, professional education expanded beyond theology, law and medicine. Graduate training based on the German-inspired American model of specialized course work and the completion of a research thesis was introduced. The policy of university education initiated in the 1960s responded to population pressure and the belief that higher education was a key to social justice and economic productivity for individuals and for society. The University of Calgary launched its program in architecture in 1971. The University of Calgary has developed a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs.

Academic Reputation

Webometrics University Rankings, which ranks universities on their presence on the Internet, ranks the University of Calgary 45th in the USA and Canada category and 50th in the world. It is ranked 3rd in Canada.

Research Infosource ranks the top 50 research universities in Canada each year. Calgary is currently ranked 7th.

The Times Higher Education Supplement ranks the school 166th in the world.

The University of Calgary is ranked in the 203-304 area, but in the 100-200 area last year, in the Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is given a regional rank (encompassing the Americas) of 99-138. Its national rank is in the area of 8-17.

Calgary's Haskayne's School of Business is renowned for strengths in undergraduate business, although this is disputed, such as in Maclean Magazine's popular ranking system. In 2006, at the Inter-Collegiate Business Competition, hosted annually by Queen's University, Calgary continued to rank at the top in each area. Twenty-eight Canadian Undegraduate Business schools, with three from outside Canada, competed to solve business problems, and complete business cases. Calgary topped the rankings in business policy, debating, finance, labour arbitration, marketing and management information systems. It ranked third in accounting. Calgary came out the most successful school, one of four in the top 3 in more than one category (seven out of eight in Calgary's case).

The University of Calgary ranks 7th in the medical-doctoral category of Maclean's annual university rankings. However, the rankings have been met with criticism.

The University of Calgary and other universities have argued that Maclean's Magazine takes data out of context and is an inaccurate reflection of performance . In 2006, 21 Canadian universities along with the University of Calgary, many being part of the leading group of research universities known as the G13, opted out of the rankings. Other universities opting out in 2006 included Dalhousie, McMaster, Simon Fraser, Alberta, British Columbia, Lethbridge, Manitoba, Montreal, Ottawa, Carleton, Toronto and Queen's.

Academic Overview

The university offers 150 programs in post-secondary education awarding bachelors, masters, and doctorate (Ph.D.) degrees. The campus has an area of 2.13 km² and hosts 16 faculties, 55 departments and 36 research institutes and centers (see Canadian university scientific research organizations). The teaching staff is 2,596. The university employs 2,777 management, professional and support staff. This puts the staff at 5,363, making it one of Calgary's four largest employers. The university has Alberta's toughest entry requirements, and due to the higher demand in post-secondary education, the acceptance rate is around 50%.[citation needed]

With the economic boom in Alberta, the government has promised $4.5 billion to post-secondary institutions in the province.

The university maintains a research partnership with the City of Calgary, the Urban Alliance. This uses problems facing cities inter-disciplinary university innovation. Its purpose is to deliver quality of life and qualified people to the city, province and county. Early innovations are helping reduce GHG, integrate immigrant newcomers, reshape urban form, reduce youth crime, adapt to climate change, create alternate energy, support seniors, increase disaster resilience, improve mobility, water quality and other aspects.

The University Library at the University of Calgary provides services through 5 physical libraries:

MacKimmie Library (the Main Library)

Business Library
301 Scurfield Hall

Gallagher Library
180 Earth Sciences Building

Health Sciences Library
Room 1450 Health Sciences Centre

Law Library
2nd Floor, Murray Fraser Hall

Research & Institutes

As one of Canada's leading research universities, innovation, discovery and learning is at the heart of all that we do. We have a relentless pursuit of quality in our teaching and research programs and are guided by our mission to contribute to the well-being of the people of Alberta, Canada and the world. The discoveries in our various faculties, institutes, and multi-faculty initiatives can be found throughout the web pages of the University of Calgary.

The Office of the Vice-President (Research) focuses on planning and policy issues, government and community relations, as well as having responsibility for such activities as chairs and institutes.

Research Services provides advice and assistance with sponsored research, grants and contracts for research and scholarly activities, help on University policy, procedures and requirements. Research Services also provides information regarding the interpretation and application of the University's Intellectual Property policy.

The Office of the Associate Dean, Research (Medical Research Office) provides information about research and related activities in the Faculty of Medicine, and provides assistance with sponsored research, grants, and contracts for the Faculty of Medicine. Research Seminars

Those proposing to do research using human subjects will find information on Ethics in Human Research and project certification requirements on the Ethics in Human Research Pages.

Research Accounting administers internal and external funds for research and scholarly activities.

The University's research and research-related policies are available through the Research Policies page.

UTI - University Technologies International is the University's technology transfer company. Contact UTI to explore commercialization opportunities.

Typically multi-disciplinary, Institutes and Centres provide a focus for, and a means of coordinating and disseminating the results of research and scholarly activity that is of cultural, economic, scientific, or social significance.

The postdoctoral Office provides information on the appointment of postdoctoral fellows and provides advice and assistance to postdocs.

Faculties

Communication & Culture
Education
Environmental Design
Fine Arts
Graduate Studies
Haskayne School of Business
Humanities
Kinesiology
Law
Medicine
Nursing (Calgary)
Nursing (Qatar)
Schulich School of Engineering
Science
Social Sciences
Social Work
Veterinary Medicine

University of Calgary was ranked 170th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking.

Simon Fraser University

The Ranking of Simon Fraser University

www.sfu.ca

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

University of British Columbia

The Ranking of University of British Columbia

http://www.ubc.ca/

The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Canadian public research university with campuses in Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. The Vancouver campus is located on Point Grey, a peninsula about 10 km from downtown Vancouver. While the originating legislation created UBC on March 7, 1908, the first day of lectures was September 30, 1915. On September 22, 1925, lectures began on the new Point Grey campus.

UBC was ranked as the fourth best university (Medical Doctoral Rankings) in Canada by Maclean's Magazine in 2008. In 2006, Newsweek magazine ranked UBC second in Canada and 27th in the world. In 2007, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked UBC as second in Canada and 33rd in the world (Social Sciences 12th, Life & Biomedical 14th, Natural Sciences 20th, Arts & Humanities 18th, Technology 22nd).

The UBC library, which comprises 4.7 million books and journals, is the second-largest research library in Canada.

History

The University of British Columbia, a single, public provincial university created in 1908 was modelled on the American state university system, with an emphasis on extension work and applied research.

The University of British Columbia is a non-denominational undergraduate and graduate teaching and research institution. A provincial university was first called into being by the British Columbia University Act of 1908, although its location was not yet specified. In 1957, the first Canadian graduate program in adult education was established at the University of British Columbia.

The policy of university education initiated in the 1960s responded to population pressure and the belief that higher education was a key to social justice and economic productivity for individuals and for society. In 1961, the first doctoral program in adult education in Canada was introduced by the University of British Columbia. The single-university policy in the West was changed as existing colleges of the provincial universities gained autonomy as universities — the University of Victoria was established in 1963.

UBC's current president is Dr. Stephen Toope, appointed on July 1, 2006. He succeeds Dr. Martha Piper, who was the University's first female president and the first non-Canadian born president. The Provost and Vice-President (VP) Academic, is currently Dr. David H. Farrar. The Vice-President Students is Brian Sullivan; VP External and Legal is Stephen Owen, VP Research is John Hepburn and VP Finance and Administration is Terry Sumner.

The Chancellor of the University, who acts as the University's ceremonial head and sits on the academic Senate and the Board of Governors, is Sarah Morgan-Silvester (as of July 1, 2008). The UBC Okanagan campus is led by Dr. Doug Owram, Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

In 2003, UBC had 3,167 full-time Faculty, and 4,612 non-faculty full-time employees. It had over forty thousand students (33,566 undergraduate students and 7,379 graduate students), and more than 180,000 alumni in 120 countries. Enrollment continues to grow. The founding of the new Okanagan campus will increase these numbers dramatically. The university is one of only two Canadian universities to have membership in Universitas 21, an international association of research-led institutions (McGill University is the other).

Buildings on the Vancouver campus currently occupy 1,091,997 m² gross, located on 1.7 km² of maintained land.The Vancouver campus' street plan is mostly in a grid of malls (for driving and pedestrian-only). Lower Mall and West Mall are in the southwestern part of the peninsula, with Main, East, and Wesbrook Malls northeast of them. Wireless internet access is available at no charge to students, faculty, and staff inside and outside of most buildings at both campuses.

Libraries

The UBC Library, which comprises 4.7 million books and journals, 5.0 million microforms, over 800,000 maps, videos and other multimedia materials and over 46,700 subscriptions, is the second largest research library in Canada.The library has twenty-six branches and divisions at UBC and at other locations, including three branches at teaching hospitals (Saint Paul's Hospital, Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre, BC Children's Hospital), one at UBC's Robson Square campus in downtown Vancouver, and one at the new UBC Okanagan campus. Plans are also under way to establish a library at the Great Northern Way Campus on the Finning Lands.

Reputation

UBC consistently ranks as one of the top three Canadian universities by Research Info Source and ranks as second in Canada and thirty-sixth in the world in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. In 2006, Newsweek magazine ranked the University of British Columbia second in Canada and 27th in the world. The Times Higher Education Supplement of the UK ranked UBC as second in Canada and thirty-third in the world in 2007. According to Maclean's University Rankings, UBC has the highest percentage of Ph. D level professors among all public universities in North America (92%). It has received widespread recognition by Maclean's and Newsweek magazines for its foreign language program; the Chinese program is North America's largest, and the Japanese program is North America's second largest (after the University of Hawaii). The Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Theory has been recognized consistently for the world-class artists who teach there. In 2003 the National Post stated UBC had the highest entrance requirements for undergraduate admission out of all universities in Canada.

Faculties and Schools

UBC's academic activity is organized into "faculties", and "schools". There are also "institutes" and "colleges", which are research organizations, and some "residential colleges" which are residence-focused academic communities.

The primary faculties and schools are:

• Faculty of Applied Science
• Faculty of Arts
• Sauder School of Business
• Continuing Studies
• Faculty of Dentistry
• Faculty of Education
• Faculty of Forestry
• Faculty of Graduate Studies
• College of Health Disciplines
• College for Interdisciplinary Studies
• Faculty of Land and Food Systems
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Medicine
• Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Faculty of Science

University of British Columbia was ranked 34th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking

University of Toronto

The Ranking of University of Toronto

http://www.utoronto.ca/

The University of Toronto (U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated a mile north of the city's Financial District on the grounds that surround Queen's Park.
Academically, the University of Toronto is noted for influential movements and curricula in literary criticism and communication theory, where it originated the concepts of "the medium is the message" and "global village". The university's Hart House is an early example of the North American student centre, simultaneously serving cultural, intellectual and recreational interests within its large Gothic-revival complex.

The university is consistently ranked among the world's best. In the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2008, the University of Toronto is placed at 24th in the world; The Times Higher Education ranking of 2008 places Toronto at 41st in the world, and in the Newsweek global university ranking of 2006, Toronto ranked 18th in the world, 9th among public universities and 5th among universities outside the United States. The University of Toronto ranked as the nation's top medical-doctoral university in Maclean's magazine for twelve consecutive years between 1994 and 2005.

History

The University of Toronto was founded as King’s College in 1827 and has evolved into a large and complex institution. It now occupies three campuses: Scarborough and Erindale and the historic St. George campus. It has federated with three smaller universities which are on the St. George campus, and is affiliated with several colleges and institutes. There are ten fully affiliated teaching hospitals in metropolitan Toronto. Faculty conduct research in many places in Canada and around the world.

The University is Canada’s most important research institution and has gained an international reputation for its research. It enrols more students, employs more faculty, and offers a greater range of courses than any other Canadian university.

A liberal arts education is the heart of the undergraduate curriculum at Toronto, and the Faculty of Arts and Science has more students than any other faculty. The education of students for the professions has always been an important part of the University’s role, and the University accordingly maintains a wide range of professional faculties. The University’s insistence on the importance of research in all disciplines has made it the major centre for graduate education in Canada. In many fields it produces a majority of the nation’s doctoral candidates. The quality and range of the programs - undergraduate, graduate and professional - attract students from all parts of the province, from around the country and from abroad.


To support its work of teaching and research, the University has collected a library that is the largest in Canada and among the best in the world. The University maintains many laboratories and specialized aids to research. The Library and many of these research facilities are available for use by members of other universities. The University of Toronto Press Inc. is the chief institution of its kind in Canada and one of the most important scholarly publishers in North America.

Library

The University of Toronto Libraries is the fourth-largest academic library system in North America, following those of Harvard, Yale and Berkeley, measured by number of volumes held. The collections include more than 10 million bound volumes, 5.4 million microfilms, 70,000 serial titles and 1 million maps, films, graphics and sound recordings. The largest of the libraries, Robarts Library, holds about five million bound volumes in its fourteen-storey complex, forming the main collection for the humanities and social sciences.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library constitutes one of the largest repositories of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts. Its extensive collections range from ancient Egyptian papyri to incunabula and libretti; the subjects of focus include British, European and Canadian literature, Aristotle, Darwin, the Spanish Civil War, the history of science and medicine, Canadiana and the history of the book. Most of the remaining holdings are dispersed at departmental and faculty libraries, in addition to about 1.3 million bound volumes that are held by the colleges. The university has collaborated with the Internet Archive since 2005 to digitalize some of its library holdings.

Reputation

In the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2008, the University of Toronto is placed at 24th in the world; by academic subject, it ranks 21st in engineering and computer science, 27th in medicine, 34th in natural science and mathematics, 48th in life and agricultural sciences, and 51–76th in social science. The Times Higher Education ranking of 2008 places Toronto at 41st in the world, 9th in natural sciences, 10th in technology, 11th in arts and humanities, 13th in life sciences and biomedicine, and 16th in social sciences. Toronto is one of five universities in the ranking that places within the top 16 in every subject category. In the Newsweek global university ranking of 2006, Toronto ranked 18th in the world, 9th among public universities and 5th among universities outside the United States.

The University of Toronto ranked as the nation's top medical-doctoral university in Maclean's magazine for twelve consecutive years between 1994 and 2005. Since 2006, it has joined 22 other national institutions in withholding data from the magazine, citing continued concerns regarding methodology. The university places second, tied with Queen's University, in the Maclean's ranking of 2008. The Faculty of Law is named the top law school in Canada by Maclean's for the second consecutive year, placing first in elite firm hiring, faculty hiring and faculty citations, second in Supreme Court clerkships and fifth in national reach.


Research

The University of Toronto has been a member of the Association of American Universities, a consortium of leading research universities in North America, since 1926. The university manages by far the largest annual research budget of any university in Canada, with direct-cost expenditures of $749 million in 2006. The federal government was the largest source of funding, with grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council amounting to about one-third of the research budget. About 8 percent of research funding came from corporations, mostly in the health science industry.

Its research achievement:

• developed first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve
• transplant and artificial pancreas
• isolated gene that allows plants to grow in salt water
• developed the chemical laser
• developed the anti-blackout suit, later adapted to create the astronaut space suit
• created the infant cereal Pablum
  

Faculties and schools

• Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
• Faculty of Arts and Science
• Faculty of Music
• Faculty of Nursing
• Faculty of Pharmacy
• Faculty of Physical Education and Health Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design
• Faculty of Dentistry
• Faculty of Forestry
• Faculty of Information
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Medicine Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
• School of Public Health
• School of Public Policy and Governance
• Rotman School of Management
• Faculty of Social Work
• Toronto School of Theology
  

University of Toronto was ranked 41st in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking

McGill University

The Ranking of McGill University

www.mcgill.ca

McGill University is one of Canada's best-known institutions of higher learning and one of the country's leading research-intensive universities. With students coming to McGill from about 160 countries, our student body is the most internationally diverse of any medical-doctoral university in Canada. The oldest university in Montreal, McGill was founded in 1821 from a generous bequest by James McGill, a prominent Scottish merchant. Since that time, McGill has grown from a small college to a bustling university with two campuses, 11 faculties, some 300 programs of study, and more than 34,000 students. The University partners with four affiliated teaching hospitals to graduate over 1,000 health care professionals each year.

34,208 students attend McGill, over four-fifths of whom are Canadian. The university has 21 faculties and professional schools, offering degrees and diplomas in over 300 fields of study, including medicine. The language of instruction is English, although students have the right to submit any graded work in English or in French (except when learning a language is an objective of the course). The university has been recognized for its award-winning research and participates in research organizations both within Canada and in the world. McGill is ranked highly in national, regional, and worldwide rankings, and is sometimes informally described as a Canadian Ivy.

Alumni from McGill have been recognized in fields ranging from the arts and sciences, to business, politics, and sports. Notably, alumni include eight Nobel laureates, three astronauts, two Canadian prime ministers, seven Academy Award winners, several Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada and twenty-five Olympic medalists. A nation-leading 130 students have also won Rhodes Scholarships to pursue studies at the University of Oxford in England.

History

Resting at the foot of Mont Royal, McGill University owes its origins to the vision and philanthropy of James McGill, a wealthy fur trader and merchant who left £10,000 and a 46-acre estate towards the establishment of a college or a university bearing his name. Founded in 1821, "McGill College" began holding classes on January 27 in 1829 in the merchant's former country house. Four years later, the College awarded a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery to its first graduate, William Leslie Logie. Construction on the Arts Building began in 1839, as the college had quickly outgrown the country house. This iconic structure still anchors the downtown campus today.

Philanthropy continued to shape McGill in the ensuing decades. With the arrival of the charismatic and world-renowned geologist, Sir William Dawson, Principal from 1855-1893, McGill grew in both size and prestige. Under his leadership, the great benefactors of the day—Lord Strathcona, Sir William Macdonald, William Molson and Peter Redpath—supported a major expansion of campus, which included the construction of more than ten new buildings. In 1885, the name McGill University was formally adopted by the college's Board of Governors.

With investment came innovation and progress. Lord Strathcona established a special fund for the education of women which led to the admission of McGill's first female students in 1884. One graduate, Carrie Derick, BA1890, was the first woman to become a professor in Canada, teaching botany at McGill. Large gifts from Sir William Macdonald around the turn of the century allowed McGill to add a second campus in Ste Anne de Bellevue and attract professors such as Ernest Rutherford, whose Nobel Prize-winning research on the nature of the radioactivity began a long tradition of McGill innovation, which has included the invention of the world's first artificial cell and Plexiglas.

McGill's reputation for excellence continued to grow as the post-war years dramatically transformed the University. The influx of returning soldiers, and then the Baby Boom generation tripled McGill's enrolment. The shift from a purely private institution to a publicly funded one opened its doors to more students. At the same time, the campus grew, with modern concrete and glass structures springing up alongside McGill's older stone buildings.

Today McGill University is recognized as one of Canada's top research-intensive universities. In 2003, Heather Munroe-Blum became McGill's 16th Principal. Under her leadership, McGill has solidified its reputation as one of the top universities in the world, excelling in the quality of its research, education and service to the community.

Research

Research plays a critical role at McGill. According to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, "Researchers at McGill are affiliated with about 75 major research centres and networks, and are engaged in an extensive array of research partnerships with other universities, government and industry in Quebec and Canada, throughout North America and in dozens of other countries." Annually, around 100 inventions take place at McGill. In recognition of its research quality, McGill is affiliated with eight Nobel Laureates and professors have won major teaching prizes.Since 1926, McGill has been a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of research-intensive universities in North America. McGill is also a founding member of Universitas 21, an international association of research-driven universities. McGill is a member of the G13, a group of prominent research universities within Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press began as McGill in 1963 and amalgamated with Queen's in 1969. McGill-Queen's University Press focuses on Canadian studies and publishes the Canadian Public Administration Series.

McGill is perhaps best recognized for its research and discoveries in the health sciences. William Osler, Wilder Penfield, Donald Hebb, Brenda Milner, and others made significant discoveries in medicine, neuroscience and psychology while working at McGill. The Montreal Neurological Institute is also located in McGill university, where many of these individuals worked. The first hormone governing the Immune System (later christened the Cyrokine 'Interleukin-2') was discovered at McGill in 1965 by Gordon & McLean. The invention of the world's first artificial cell was made by Thomas Chang, an undergraduate student at the university. While chair of physics at McGill, nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford performed the experiment that led to the discovery of the alpha particle and its function in radioactive decay, which won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.William Chalmers invented Plexiglas while a graduate student at McGill. In computing, MUSIC/SP, software for mainframes once popular among universities and colleges around the world, was developed at McGill. A team also contributed to the development of Archie, a pre-WWW search engine. A 3270 terminal emulator developed at McGill was commercialized and later sold to Hummingbird Software.

Campus

McGill's main campus is set upon 32 hectares (80 acres) at the foot of Mount Royal in Downtown Montreal. A second campus, Macdonald Campus, is situated on 6.5 square kilometres (1,600 acres) of fields and forested land in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, 30 kilometres west of the downtown campus.

Academic Reputation

McGill is one of Canada's top-ranked universities among those offering medical and doctoral degrees, ranking first in Canada for the fourth consecutive year in the Maclean's 18th annual University Rankings issue. The university has held first place in student awards for nine consecutive years, and consistently ranks first for reputation, average size, and number of social sciences and humanities grants per full-time faculty.In addition, Maclean's ranked McGill's law school second overall for two consecutive years. In particular, McGill's law school, which requires reading knowledge of French and offers the joint B.C.L./LL.B. degree in both civil law and common law, ranked first by supreme court clerkships, second by elite firm hiring, third by faculty hiring, fourth by faculty journal citations, and eight by national reach.In the Times Higher Education (THE) - QS World University Rankings 2008, McGill University was ranked the best university in Canada, the second-best public university and 14th overall in North America, and 20th in the world. Within specific fields, McGill ranked 10th in the life sciences and biomedicine, 13th in the arts and humanities, 14th in the social sciences, 22nd in the natural sciences, and 18th in technology. When McGill placed 12th overall in the 2007 ranking, the achievement has been regarded as the "highest rank to be reached by a Canadian institution.".

In Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities 2008, McGill ranked third in Canada, 42nd in the Americas, and 60th in the world. In its 2006 ranking of global universities, Newsweek ranked McGill third in Canada, 30th in North America, and 42nd worldwide. In the 2008 College Prowler Online rankings for Academics at North American universities, McGill earned an A- for Academics; making it the only Canadian school to achieve a grade above a B-.The Financial Times' global MBA ranking placed McGill's business school, the Desautels Faculty of Management, 44th in the world in 2006 and 96th in 2008, for a three year average rank of 77. Notably, the ranking placed it 33rd and 31st worldwide in the value for money and alumni recommended categories respectively. In BusinessWeek's Best International B-Schools Of 2008, Desautels was ranked among the top 16 international business schools, ranking fourth in intellectual capital with a selectivity of 32%. During the same year, The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the business school 100th in the world, and in particular, 15th in the world for breadth of alumni network.

The Globe and Mail's Canadian University Report awarded McGill top marks in its 2008 annual university survey. McGill received an A+ for Academic Reputation, the highest score of any large, medium, or small sized University. Additionally the school received an A- for: most satisfied students, quality of education, extracurricular activities, recreation and athletics, and campus atmosphere; as well as A's in both library services and campus technology. The Canadian University Report awarded McGill's downtown campus a D for its 'on-campus' food services and a C for its on-campus pub Gerts.Research Infosource named McGill "Research University of the Year" in its 2003 and 2005 rankings of Canada's Top 50 Research Universities. In 2007, Research Infosource ranked McGill the second-best research university in the country, after the University of Toronto. They also ranked McGill University third in Canada in research-intensity and fourth in total-research funding, finding that McGill ranks in the top five universities in terms of research dollars per full-time faculty member and number of refereed publications per full-time faculty member. The study showed that research funding represents approximately $259,100 per faculty member, the fourth highest in the country.In October 2008, McGill University was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's newsmagazine.

Faculties and Schools

• Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
• Faculty of Arts
• Centre for Continuing Education
• Continuing Education site Faculty of Dentistry
• Faculty of Education
• Faculty of Engineering
• Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
• Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies site
• Faculty of Law Desautels
• Faculty of Management
• Faculty of Medicine
• Schulich School of Music
• Faculty of Religious Studies
• Faculty of Science

McGill University was ranked 20th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking