Academically, the University of Toronto is noted for influential movements and curricula in literary criticism and communication theory, known collectively as the Toronto School. The university was the birthplace of insulin and stem cell research, and was the site of the first practical electron microscope, the development of multi-touch technology, the identification of Cygnus X-1 as a black hole, and the theory of NP completeness. By a significant margin, it receives the most annual research funding of any Canadian university. It is one of two members of the Association of American Universities located outside the United States.
The Varsity Blues are the athletic teams representing the university in intercollegiate league matches, with particularly long and storied ties to gridiron football and ice hockey. 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.
Toronto ranks highly in global rankings and is consistently ranked first in Canada. According to the 2015 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Ranking, it is ranked 14th overall, 24th by the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities, 20th in the world in the 2014 QS World University Rankings, and 16th in the world in the 2015 Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings. The University of Toronto has educated two Governors General and four Prime Ministers of Canada, four foreign leaders, fourteen Justices of the Supreme Court, and has been affiliated with ten Nobel laureates.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Grounds
3 Governance and colleges
4 Academics
4.1 Library and collections
4.2 Reputation
5 Research
6 Athletics
7 Culture and student life
7.1 Greek life
7.2 Theatre and music
7.3 Student media
7.4 Residences
8 Notable people
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links
History[edit]
The founding of a colonial college had long been the desire of John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. As an Oxford-educated military commander who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, Simcoe believed a college was needed to counter the spread of republicanism from the United States. The Upper Canada Executive Committee recommended in 1798 that a college be established in York, the colonial capital.
A painting by Sir Edmund Walker depicts University College as it appeared in 1858.
On March 15, 1827, a royal charter was formally issued by King George IV, proclaiming "from this time one College, with the style and privileges of a University ... for the education of youth in the principles of the Christian Religion, and for their instruction in the various branches of Science and Literature ... to continue for ever, to be called King's College. The granting of the charter was largely the result of intense lobbying by John Strachan, the influential Anglican Bishop of Toronto who took office as the first president of the college. The original three-storey Greek Revival school building was constructed on the present site of Queen's Park.
Under Strachan's stewardship, King's College was a religious institution that closely aligned with the Church of England and the British colonial elite, known as the Family Compact. Reformist politicians opposed the clergy's control over colonial institutions and fought to have the college secularized.[ In 1849, after a lengthy and heated debate, the newly elected responsible government of Upper Canada voted to rename King's College as the University of Toronto and severed the school's ties with the church. Having anticipated this decision, the enraged Strachan had resigned a year earlier to open Trinity College as a private Anglican seminary. University College was created as the nondenominational teaching branch of the University of Toronto. During the American Civil War, the threat of Union blockade on British North America prompted the creation of the University Rifle Corps, which saw battle in resisting the Fenian raids on the Niagara border in 1866.
A Sopwith Camel aircraft rests on the Front Campus lawn in 1918, during World War I.
Established in 1878, the School of Practical Science was precursor to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, which has been nicknamed Skule since its earliest days.[18] While the Faculty of Medicine opened in 1843, medical teaching was conducted by proprietary schools from 1853 until 1887, when the faculty absorbed the Toronto School of Medicine. Meanwhile, the university continued to set examinations and confer medical degrees during that period. The university opened the Faculty of Law in 1887, and it was followed by the Faculty of Dentistry in 1888, when the Royal College of Dental Surgeons became an affiliate. Women were admitted to the university for the first time in 1884.
A devastating fire in 1890 gutted the interior of University College and destroyed thirty-three thousand volumes from the library, but the university restored the building and replenished its library within two years. Over the next two decades, a collegiate system gradually took shape as the university arranged federation with several ecclesiastical colleges, including Strachan's Trinity College in 1904. The university operated the Royal Conservatory of Music from 1896 to 1991 and the Royal Ontario Museum from 1912 to 1968; both still retain close ties with the university as independent institutions. The University of Toronto Press was founded in 1901 as the first academic publishing house in Canada. The Faculty of Forestry, founded in 1907 with Bernhard Fernow as dean, was the first university faculty devoted to forest science in Canada. In 1910, the Faculty of Education opened its laboratory school, the University of Toronto Schools.
The First and Second World Wars curtailed some university activities as undergraduate and graduate men eagerly enlisted. Intercollegiate athletic competitions and the Hart House Debates were suspended, although exhibition and interfaculty games were still held. The David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill opened in 1935, followed by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies in 1949. The university opened satellite campuses in Scarborough in 1964 and in Mississauga in 1967. The university's former affiliated schools at the Ontario Agricultural College and Glendon Hall became fully independent of the University of Toronto and became part of University of Guelph in 1964 and York University in 1965, respectively. Beginning in the 1980s, reductions in government funding prompted more rigorous fundraising efforts. The University of Toronto was the first Canadian university to amass a financial endowment greater than C$1 billion.
Grounds[edit]
Soldiers' Tower, a memorial to alumni fallen in the World Wars, contains a 51-bell carillon.
The university grounds lie about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of the Financial District in Downtown Toronto, and immediately south of the neighbourhoods of Yorkville and The Annex. The site encompasses 71 hectares (180 acres) bounded mostly by Bay Street, Bloor Street, Spadina Avenue and College Street. An enclave surrounded by university grounds, Queen's Park contains the Ontario Legislative Building and several historic monuments. With its green spaces and many interlocking courtyards, the university forms a distinct region of urban parkland in the city's downtown core. The namesake University Avenue is a ceremonial boulevard and arterial thoroughfare that runs through downtown between Queen's Park and Front Street. The Spadina, St. George, Museum, and Queen's Park stations of the Toronto rapid transit system are located in the vicinity.
Stone pillars of the Bennett Gates mark the southern entrance of Philosopher's Walk.
The architecture is epitomized by a combination of Romanesque and Gothic Revival buildings spread across the eastern and central portions of campus, most of them dating between 1858 and 1929. The traditional heart of the university, known as Front Campus, is located near the centre of the campus in an oval lawn enclosed by King's College Circle. The centrepiece is the main building of University College, built in 1857 with an eclectic blend of Richardsonian Romanesque and Norman architectural elements. The dramatic effect of this blended design by architect Frederick William Cumberland drew praise from European visitors of the time: "Until I reached Toronto," remarked Lord Dufferin during his visit in 1872, "I confess I was not aware that so magnificent a specimen of architecture existed upon the American continent." The building was declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 1968.[32] Built in 1907, Convocation Hall is recognizable for its domed roof and Ionic-pillared rotunda. Although its foremost function is hosting the annual convocation ceremonies, the building serves as a venue for academic and social events throughout the year. The sandstone buildings of Knox College epitomizes the North American collegiate Gothic design, with its characteristic cloisters surrounding a secluded courtyard.
The neoclassical Convocation Hall is characterized by its domed roof and Ionic-pillared rotunda.
A lawn at the northeast is anchored by Hart House, a Gothic-revival student centre complex. Among its many common rooms, the building's Great Hall is noted for large stained-glass windows and a long quotation from John Milton's Areopagitica that is inscribed around the walls. The adjacent Soldiers' Tower stands 143 feet (44 m) tall as the most prominent structure in the vicinity, its stone arches etched with the names of university members lost to the battlefields of the two World Wars. The tower houses a 51-bell carillon that is played on special occasions such as Remembrance Day and convocation. North of University College, the main building of Trinity College displays Jacobethan Tudor architecture, while its chapel was built in the Perpendicular Gothic style of Giles Gilbert Scott. The chapel features exterior walls of sandstone and interiors of Indiana Limestone, and was constructed by Italian stonemasons using ancient building methods. Philosopher's Walk is a scenic footpath that follows a meandering, wooded ravine linking with Trinity College, Varsity Arena and the Faculty of Law. Victoria College is on the eastern side of Queen's Park, centred on a Romanesque main building made of contrasting red sandstone and grey limestone.
Developed after the Second World War, the western section of the campus consists mainly of modernist and internationalist structures that contain laboratories and faculty offices.[29] The most significant example of Brutalist architecture is the massive Robarts Library complex, built in 1972 and opened a year later in 1973. It features raised podia, extensive use of triangular geometric designs and a towering fourteen-storey concrete structure that cantilevers above a field of open space and mature trees. Sidney Smith Hall is the home to the Faculty of Arts and Science, as well as a few departments within that faculty. The Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building, completed in 2006, exhibits the high-tech architectural style of glass and steel by British architect Norman Foster.
Governance and colleges[edit]
Old Vic, the main building of Victoria College, typifies the Richardsonian Romanesque style.
The University of Toronto has traditionally been a decentralized institution, with governing authority shared among its central administration, academic faculties and colleges.[44] The Governing Council is the unicameral legislative organ of the central administration, overseeing general academic, business and institutional affairs. Before 1971, the university was governed under a bicameral system composed of the board of governors and the university senate. The chancellor, usually a former governor general, lieutenant governor, premier or diplomat, is the ceremonial head of the university. The president is appointed by the council as the chief executive.
Unlike most North American institutions, the University of Toronto is a collegiate university with a model that resembles those of the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford in Britain. The colleges hold substantial autonomy over admissions, scholarships, programs and other academic and financial affairs, in addition to the housing and social duties of typical residential colleges.[45][46] The system emerged in the 19th century, as ecclesiastical colleges considered various forms of union with the University of Toronto to ensure their viability. The desire to preserve religious traditions in a secular institution resulted in the federative collegiate model that came to characterize the university.
The Chapel of Trinity College reflects the college's Anglican heritage.
University College was the founding nondenominational college, created in 1853 after the university was secularized. Knox College, a Presbyterian institution, and Wycliffe College, a low church seminary, both encouraged their students to study for non-divinity degrees at University College. In 1885, they entered a formal affiliation with the University of Toronto, and became federated schools in 1890. The idea of federation initially met strong opposition at Victoria University, a Methodist school in Cobourg, but a financial incentive in 1890 convinced the school to join.[49] Decades after the death of John Strachan, the Anglican seminary Trinity College entered federation in 1904, followed in 1910 by St. Michael's College, a Roman Catholic college founded by the Basilian Fathers. Among the institutions that had considered federation but ultimately remained independent were McMaster University, a Baptist school that later moved to Hamilton, and Queen's College, a Presbyterian school in Kingston that later became Queen's University.
Colleges of the University of Toronto
Constituent colleges
Innis College
New College
University College
Woodsworth College
Theological colleges
Knox College
Regis College
Wycliffe College
Federated colleges
St. Michael's College
Trinity College
St. Hilda's College
Victoria University
Emmanuel College
Postgraduate college
Massey College
The post-war era saw the creation of New College in 1962, Innis College in 1964 and Woodsworth College in 1974, all of them nondenominational. Along with University College, they comprise the university's constituent colleges, which are established and funded by the central administration and are therefore financially dependent. Massey College was established in 1963 by the Massey Foundation as a college exclusively for graduate students. Regis College, a Jesuit seminary, entered federation with the university in 1979.
In contrast with the constituent colleges, the colleges of Knox, Massey, Regis, St. Michael's, Trinity, Victoria and Wycliffe continue to exist as legally distinct entities, each possessing a separate financial endowment. While St. Michael's, Trinity and Victoria continue to recognize their religious affiliations and heritage, they have since adopted secular policies of enrolment and teaching in non-divinity subjects. Some colleges have, or once had, collegiate structures of their own: Emmanuel College is a college of Victoria and St. Hilda's College is part of Trinity; St. Joseph’s College had existed as a college within St. Michael's until it was dissolved in 2006. Ewart College existed as an affiliated college until 1991, when it was merged into Knox College. Postgraduate theology degrees are conferred by the colleges of Knox, Regis and Wycliffe, along with the divinity faculties within Emmanuel, St. Michael's and Trinity, including joint degrees with the university through the Toronto School of Theology.
Academics[edit]
The Munk School of Global Affairs encompasses programs and research institutes for international relations.
The Faculty of Arts and Science is the university's main undergraduate faculty, and administers most of the courses in the college system. While the colleges are not entirely responsible for teaching duties, most of them house specialized academic programs and lecture series. Among other subjects, Trinity College is associated with programs in international relations, as are University College with Canadian studies, Victoria College with Renaissance studies, Innis College with film studies, New College with gender studies, Woodsworth College with industrial relations and St. Michael's College with Medievalism. The faculty teaches undergraduate commerce in collaboration with the Rotman School of Management. The Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is the other major direct-entry undergraduate faculty.
The University of Toronto is the birthplace of an influential school of thought on communication theory and literary criticism, known as the Toronto School. Described as "the theory of the primacy of communication in the structuring of human cultures and the structuring of the human mind", the school is rooted in the works of Eric A. Havelock and Harold Innis and the subsequent contributions of Edmund Snow Carpenter, Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. Since 1963, the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology of the Faculty of Information has carried the mandate for teaching and advancing the Toronto School.
The Sandford Fleming Building contains offices of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.
Several notable works in arts and humanities are based at the university, including the Dictionary of Canadian Biography since 1959 and the Collected Works of Erasmus since 1969. The Records of Early English Drama collects and edits the surviving documentary evidence of dramatic arts in pre-Puritan England, while the Dictionary of Old English compiles the early vocabulary of the English language from the Anglo-Saxon period.
The Munk School of Global Affairs encompasses the university's various programs and curricula in international affairs and foreign policy. As the Cold War heightened, Toronto's Slavic studies program evolved into an important institution on Soviet politics and economics, financed by the Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon foundations. The Munk School is also home to the G20 Research Group, which conducts independent monitoring and analysis on the Group of Twenty, and the Citizen Lab, which conducts research on Internet censorship as a joint founder of the OpenNet Initiative. The university operates international offices in Berlin, Hong Kong and Siena.
The Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a Faculty of the University of Toronto that originated as one of the School of Hygiene begun by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1927. The School went through a dramatic renaissance after the 2003 SARS crisis and it is now the largest public health school in Canada, with more than 750 faculty, 800 students, and research and training partnerships with institutions throughout Toronto and the world. With more than $39-million in research funding per year, the School supports discovery in global health, tobacco impacts on health, occupational disease and disability, air pollution, inner city, circumpolar health, and many other pressing issues in population health.
The Faculty of Medicine is affiliated with a network of ten teaching hospitals, providing medical treatment, research and advisory services to patients and clients from Canada and abroad. A core member of the network is University Health Network, itself a specialized federation of Toronto General Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, and Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. Physicians in the medical institutes have cross-appointments to faculty and supervisory positions in university departments. The Rotman School of Management developed the discipline and methodology of integrative thinking, upon which the school bases its curriculum. Founded in 1887, the Faculty of Law's emphasis on formal teachings of liberal arts and legal theory was then considered unconventional, but gradually helped shift the country's legal education system away from the apprenticeship model that prevailed until the mid-20th century. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education is the teachers college of the university, affiliated with its two laboratory schools, the Institute of Child Study and the University of Toronto Schools. Autonomous institutes at the university include the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the Fields Institute.
Faculties of the University of Toronto
Faculty of Arts and Science
Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design
Faculty of Music
Faculty of Forestry
Faculty of Information
Faculty of Medicine
Faculty of Nursing
Faculty of Pharmacy
Faculty of Dentistry
Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education
Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Faculty of Law
Rotman School of Management
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Faculty of Social Work
Toronto School of Theology
Library and collections[edit]
Robarts Library houses the university's main collection for humanities and social sciences.
The University of Toronto Libraries is the third-largest academic library system in North America, following those of Harvard and Yale, 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 that form the main collection for humanities and social sciences. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library constitutes one of the largest repositories of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts. Its 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 books. 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 digitize some of its library holdings.
Housed within University College, the University of Toronto Art Centre contains three major art collections. The Malcove Collection is primarily represented by Early Christian and Byzantine sculptures, bronzeware, furniture, icons and liturgical items. It also includes glassware and stone reliefs from the Greco-Roman period, and the painting Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, dated from 1538. The University of Toronto Collection features Canadian contemporary art,[ while the University College Art Collection holds significant works by the Group of Seven and 19th century landscape artists.
Reputation[edit]
University rankings
Global rankings
University of Toronto
ARWU World
QS World[
THE-WUR World[
USNWR_GU Global Universities[
Canadian rankings
Maclean's Medical/Doctoral[
THE-WUR National
The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings of 2015 ranks the University of Toronto at 16th place globally and 1st in Canada, while the QS World University Rankings of 2014 placed the university at 20th in the world and 1st in Canada.[93] In the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2014, the University of Toronto is placed at 24th in the world and 1st in Canada. It ranked 25th worldwide in the 2012 report compiled by Human Resources & Labor Review on graduate performance, 9th worldwide in the 2010 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, 14th in the High Impact Universities ranking, 14th in a New York Times employment survey in 2013,[ and 2nd globally in the University Ranking by Academic Performance of 2012.[99] In 2011, the university received a grade of A- for environmental sustainability from the Sustainable Endowments Institute. The university has placed first among Canada's research universities in the annual ranking by Research Infosource since 2001. In 2011, the University of Toronto was named by Newsweek as one of the top three schools outside of the United States. In 2014, it was also ranked 14th in the world by the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities Ranking.
The University of Toronto ranked as the nation's top medical-doctoral (category) university in Maclean's magazine for eleven consecutive years between 1994 and 2004. Since 2009, it has joined 22 other national institutions in withholding data from the magazine, citing continued concerns regarding methodology. In 2013, the Faculty of Law was named the top law school in Canada by Maclean's for the seventh consecutive year.
Research[edit]
The AeroVelo Atlas was the first to win the Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition
Since 1926, the University of Toronto has been a member of the Association of American Universities, a consortium of the leading North American research universities. The university manages by far the largest annual research budget of any university in Canada, with sponsored direct-cost expenditures of $878 million in 2010. 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 eight percent of research funding came from corporations, mostly in the health care industry.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon