University of Calgary

The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 (after operating as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta since 1945) the University of Calgary is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.

More than 25,000 undergraduate and 6,000 graduate students are currently enrolled. The University of Calgary has graduated over 155,000 alumni in 152 countries, including James Gosling who invented the Java computer language, former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk.

The University of Calgary is one of Canada’s top research universities (based on the number of Canada Research Chairs) and is a member of the U15 (the 15 most research-intensive universities in Canada).

The University of Calgary is the birthplace of a number of important inventions, including the neurochip. The university's sponsored research revenue of $352 million, with total revenues exceeding $1.1 billion, is one of the highest in the country. Being in Calgary, with Canada's highest concentration of engineers and geoscientists, the Faculty of Science, Department of Geosciences and the Schulich School of Engineering maintain ties to the petroleum and geoscience industry.

Calgary

Calgary ⁱ/ˈkælɡᵊri/ is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. It is situated at the confluence of the Bow River and the Elbow River in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, about 80 km (50 mi) east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies. In the 2011 census, the City of Calgary had a population of 1,096,833 and a metropolitan population of 1,214,839, making it the largest city in Alberta, and the third-largest municipality and fifth-largest census metropolitan area (CMA) in Canada.

The economy of Calgary includes activity in the energy, financial services, film and television, transportation and logistics, technology, manufacturing, aerospace, health and wellness, retail, and tourism sectors. The Calgary CMA is home to the second-highest number of corporate head offices in Canada among the country's 800 largest corporations.

Calgary anchors the south end of what Statistics Canada defines as the "Calgary–Edmonton Corridor".

In 1988, Calgary became the first Canadian city to host the Olympic Winter Games.

University

A university (Latin: universitas, "a whole") is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which grants academic degrees in various subjects and typically provides undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word "university" is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars."

History

Definition

The original Latin word "universitas" refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc." At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialised "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.

In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying historically to Medieval universities.