Carleton University

Overview

Founded in 1942 and established as a full university in 1957 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Carleton University is a mid-sized public university renowned for comprehensive research programs. Initially intended to serve the sizable non-Catholic population of the now-dissolved Carleton County and returning World War II veterans, the university witnessed massive expansion in the following decades and now counts thousands of undergraduate and graduate students across multiple disciplines.

Currently, Carleton University offers a number of degree programs through its major faculties, namely the Arts and Social Sciences, Engineering and Design, Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, Public Affairs, Science, and the Sprott School of Business.

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences oversees a number of disciplines along the fields of social sciences and humanities, foremost of which are sociology, African studies, psychology, anthropology, music, geography, French, and English, among others.

The faculty is well-recognized for its College of the Humanities, which is part of the country's Great Books programs. Another is the Institute of Cognitive Science that offers not only undergraduate and masters programs but also the only comprehensively systematic PhD program in cognitive science in Canada. The faculty's MA in Digital Humanities is also notable for being among the first in the country. Also, the faculty's Public History Program is well received in the country, recognized for conducting innovative teaching and research. Indeed, the program has been awarded various national prizes.

The Faculty of Engineering and Design offers a wide range of programs in information technology, industrial design, architecture, and core engineering. Courses on offer include 20 undergraduate and 37 graduate programs at masteral and doctoral levels.

The faculty is renowned for its undergraduate course in aerospace engineering, the first of its kind in Canada, along with courses, which include Bachelor in Industrial Design, Bachelor of Information Technology programs, and the highly esteemed Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism.

The Faculty of Science offers multiple undergraduate and graduate programs. These are extended across such fields as computer science, biology, earth sciences, chemistry, neuroscience, mathematics, and health sciences, counting thousands of students and hundreds of faculty staff to oversee them.

The main library of Carleton University is the MacOdrum Library. As of 2017, it counted 1.8 million printed materials, 876,396 ebooks, and 161, 396 cartographic materials. Its Discovery Centre for Undergraduate Research further boasts of 3D printers, video game laboratories, and multimedia collaborative spaces, among others.

The library further maintains an extensive collection of artifacts, historic documents, personal effects of notable persons of historical significance, and academic discipline-specific materials, among others. Researchers will find artworks and other important documents related to French art history in the W. McAllister Johnson Collection, for example. Another significant collection pertains to the fate of Uganda's South Asian minority under the regime of Idi Amin.