University of Calgary

Overview

The University of Calgary (U of C) is a public university located in Calgary, Alberta in Canada, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees across 14 faculties and a strong research program. Patterned after the US state university model, the U of C provides academic and professional programs designed around work and applied research.

Established in 1966, the university has its roots as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1944. Today, U of C is one of the country’s top research institutions and it consistently places in the top 200 world rankings.

Among its notable departments include the Haskayne School of Business, the Cumming School of Medicine, the School of Public Policy, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts. It is also home to more than 85 research centers. Likewise, its geosciences and engineering departments have close cooperation with the petroleum and geoscience industry.

The institution that would become the U of C today was started in 1905 as the Normal School of Calgary. It was founded to train primary and high school teachers in Alberta. In 1945, the school was made part of the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and was later designated as a satellite campus in Calgary.

As early as the late forties, the path towards becoming an independent university started with calls for constructing the branch campus’ own facilities, culminating in 1966 when the Alberta legislature chartered the Calgary campus as a separate university. The U of C would further expand during the sixties and the seventies, with additional programs and constructions such as a university theater, an architecture program, and new buildings for the engineering and science departments.

Notable alumni include Steven Harper (prime minister of Canada), Garrett Camp (co-founder of Uber), James Gosling (inventor of the Java computer language), Robert Thirsk (astronaut), and Chip Wilson (founder of Lululemon Athletica), among others.

Today, U of C provides 250 bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs. It has departments and schools in the fields of architecture, law, sciences, social work, veterinary medicine, business, arts, kinesiology, engineering, education, and graduate studies.

Its library system houses more than 3.7 million printed volumes and over 300,000 full-text electronic journals. The U of C library system is one of the top eight by volume in Canada (as of 2012). It is also the first library in North America to house a video game archive.