5 Historical Facts About Waterloo Universities

Introduction

The main campus of Waterloo Universities is located at Waterloo in Ontario, Canada near Waterloo Park at Uptown Waterloo. This university is commonly referred as University of Waterloo or UW or simply as Waterloo. Waterloo Universities or UW offers a wide range of academic programs controlled by 6 faculties and 3 associated degree-granting institutions. Waterloo Universities belong to the group of fifteen foremost research oriented universities in Canada.

History

This University was founded as Waterloo College Associate Faculties on July 1, 1957. Today as a co-educational institution it has over 4,000 post-graduate and 26,000 undergraduate students. The former students and alumni can be traced over 142 countries around the world. The Waterloo Universities celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007. The first building of this university was dedicated to the “Chemistry and Chemical Engineering” department in 1958 and it was followed by the “Physics and Mathematics building in 1959 and “Arts” building in 1962. The newly formed university quickly diversified its educational offerings subsequently within a very short period.

The Waterloo Universities adopted UW abbreviation in 1959 when it amalgamated with an old institution founded in 1865 named the University of St. Jerome's College and Catholic Liberal Arts College of Kitchener. The Waterloo Universities built own miniature college site in 1959 at Laurel Creek and different church bodies like Mennonite, Anglican and United Church joined them with affiliated status within their own respective establishments. The three principal founders of this university were Ira G. Needles, the first chairman of the board of governors, J. Gerald Hagey, the founding president and Reverend Cornelius Siegfried who brought St. Jerome's College into association with University of Waterloo.

Features

The Waterloo Universities earned its reputation since its early days on its various academic offerings like, clinical psychology, kinesiology, earth sciences, groundwater studies, architecture, actuarial science, accounting and many more. They had many part-time, full-time courses from the beginning and a large program on correspondence courses was developed in 1970s. A computer research center was established in the name of William G. Davis in 1988. The center for Environmental and Information Technology was established within the campus in 2003 through government and private funding.

This university receives regular funding over millions of dollars from governments, industries and grant agencies for the continuance of their research works.

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