University of British Columbia

Categories: Universitas 21 | University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university with its main campus located at Point Grey, in the University Endowment Lands, a suburb, however not directly adjoining Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and another smaller campus known as UBC Okanagan located in Kelowna, British Columbia. It also has two smaller campuses in Vancouver: its campus at Vancouver General Hospital for the medical sciences and its UBC Robson Square campus in the downtown area of Vancouver for part-time credit and non-credit programs.

A twenty-minute drive from downtown Vancouver, the Point Grey campus of the university is near several beaches and has views of the local mountains. The 7.63 km² Pacific Spirit Regional Park serves as a green-belt between the campus and the city. UBC, along with Pacific Spirit Regional Park and the residential community of University Hill, form the University Endowment Lands, which technically does not fall within Vancouver's city limits.

The Okanagan campus is located in the north end of Kelowna at the former site of Okanagan University College.

University of British Columbia
Image:UBC-Crest.png
Motto	Tuum est (Previous official translation: "It's up to you"; now: "It's yours")
Founded	1908
School type	Public
Chancellor	Allan McEachern
President	Martha Piper
Location	Vancouver, British Columbia
Enrollment	33,000 undergrad, 7,000 grad
Campus surroundings	Forest, ocean, beach
Campus size	1.7 km² maintained
Mascot	Thunderbird

Contents 1 Early history 2 The University today 3 The University library 3.1 Library branches 4 Current faculties and schools 5 Alumni 5.1 Recipients of honorary degrees 6 Famous instructors 7 Sites of interest 7.1 Gardens 7.2 Museums and galleries 7.3 Performance arts theatres 7.4 Student Clubs 8 Student services and residences 9 Tuition 10 Sports and recreation 11 Student media 12 Athletics 13 List of Presidents 14 See also 15 External link

Early history

The information in this section is taken from "The History of the University" by former UBC President N.A.M. (Norman) MacKenzie, originally published in "The President's Report", 1957-58, available online at the UBC Archives.

A provincial university was first called into being by the British Columbia University Act of 1890. The Act constituted a twenty-one member senate with Dr. Israel W. Powell of Victoria as Chancellor.

Attempts at establishing a degree-granting university with assistance from the Universities of Toronto and McGill saw varying degrees of success. The McGill University College of British Columbia was set up as a private institution granting McGill University degrees until 1915.

In the meantime appeals were again made to the government to revive the earlier legislation for a provincial institution, leading to the University Endowment Act in 1907, and The University Act in 1908. In 1910 the Point Grey site was chosen, and the government appointed Dr. Frank Fairchild Wesbrook as President in 1913. The outbreak of war in August, 1914 compelled the University to postpone plans for building at Point Grey, and instead the former McGill College site at Fairview became home to the University until 1925. The first day of lectures was September 30, 1915.

World War I dominated campus life, and the student body was "decimated" by enlistments for active service, with three hundred UBC students in Company "D" alone. By the end of the war, 697 members of the University had enlisted. A total of 109 students graduated in the three war-time congregations, all but one in the Faculties of Arts and Science.

In 1922 the now twelve-hundred-strong student body embarked on a "Build the University" campaign. 56,000 signatures were presented at legislature in support, and on September 22, 1925, lectures began on the new Point Grey campus.

Except for the Library and Natural Science buildings, all the campus buildings were temporary constructions. Two playing fields were built by the students themselves, but the University had no dormitories and no social centre. Still, the University continued to grow by leaps and bounds.

Soon, however, the effects of the depression began to be felt. In 1932-33 salaries were cut by up to 23%. Posts remained vacant, and many faculty lost their jobs. Most graduate courses were dropped. Just as things began to improve, World War II broke out.

Canada declared war on September 10, 1939. Soon afterwards, University President Klinck wrote:

From the day of the declaration of war, the University has been prepared to put at the disposal of the Government all possible assistance by way of laboratories, equipment and trained personnel, in so far as such action is consistent with the maintenance of reasonably efficient instructional standards. To do less would be unthinkable.

Military training on the campus became popular, and WWII marked the first provision of money from the federal government to the University. By the end of the war, it became clear that the facilities at Point Grey had become totally inadequate. The University needed new staff, new courses, new faculties, and new buildings for teaching and accommodation. The student population rose from 2,974 in 1944-45 to 9,374 in 1947-48.

Surplus Army and Air Force camps were used for both classrooms and accommodation. Fifteen complete camps were taken over by the University in the course of the 1945-46 session alone, with a sixteenth camp, situated on Little Mountain in Vancouver, converted into suites for married students.

Student numbers hit 9,374 in 1948; more than 53% of the students were war veterans in 1947-67. Between 1947 and 1951 twenty new permanent buildings were erected.

The University today

UBC's current president is Dr. Martha Piper. She is both the University's first female president and the first non-Canadian born president, though she holds Canadian citizenship. She recently announced her intention to retire from her post in June, 2006.

The Vice-President (VP) Students is Brian Sullivan; VP External and Legal is Dennis Pavlich, incoming VP Research is John Hepburn, and VP Finance and Administration is Terry Sumner.

UBC's 2001 operating income was $36.6 million CAD.

In 2003, UBC had 3,167 full-time faculty, and 4,612 non-faculty full-time employees. It had over forty thousand students (33,566 undergraduate students and 7,379 graduate students), and more than 180,000 alumni in 120 countries. Enrollment continues to grow. The founding of the new Okanagan campus will increase these numbers dramatically. The university is one of only two Canadian members to have membership in Universitas 21, an international association of research-led institutions (McGill University is the other).

Buildings on campus currently occupy 1,091,997 gross m², located on 1.7 km² of maintained land.

The university's street plan is mostly in a grid of malls (for driving and pedestrian-only). Lower Mall and West Mall are in the southwestern part of the peninsula, with Main, East, and Wesbrook Malls northeast of them.

The University library

UBC Library is the second largest research library in Canada. There are twenty-one branches and divisions at UBC and at other locations, including three branches at teaching hospitals (St.Paul's, Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre, and Children's and Women's Health Centre of BC) and one at UBC's Robson Square campus in downtown Vancouver. Plans are also underway to establish a library at the Great Northern Way Campus on the Finning Lands.

The Library's collections are large and diverse, and include four million books and journals, 4.9 million microforms, more than 1.5 million maps, videos and other multimedia materials and over 33,500 subscriptions. UBC Library has the largest biomedical collection in Western Canada and the largest collection of Asian Language materials in the country. It is a depository library as well for publications of the governments of BC, Canada, Japan and the United Nations.

Collections of special and rare materials include the H. Colin Slim Stravinsky Collection, the largest collection of its kind in Canada; and the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, containing more than 25,000 rare and one-of-a-kind items relating to the discovery of BC, the development of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Chinese immigration to Canada.

Library branches

• Asian Library: The Asian Library houses the largest research collection in Asian languages in Canada, its holdings in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian and Indonesian exceeding 500,000 volumes. Special materials include the valuable Puban collection (蒲坂藏書樓藏書), Swann collection, Song Xuepeng collection (宋學鵬藏書), Jing Yi Zhai (景頤齋藏書), Japanese government publications, research materials on Chinese Canadian settlement in British Columbia and Pearl Delta Area as well as Japanese Canadian studies collections. Its rare book collection, mainly from the Puban collection, ranks 5th in North America. The Chinese collection ranked 11th in North America in number of volumes at the time of publication of Endymion Wilkinson's _Chinese History: A Manual_ in 2000.
• Main Library: After a recent renovation of the third-floor atrium in 2001, the Chapman Reading Commons [1] and the Chung Collection of immigration documents [2] were created. In autumn of 2003, one-third of it (formerly Ridington Computing Room, Fine Arts Library, and the Design Art Gallery at the basement) was demolished in preparation for new glass-walled study areas, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre [3], to be completed in 2005.
• Walter Koerner Library: built in 1997, adding to the Sedgewick Library. Koerner Library is almost entirely dedicated to the humanities and is home to 800,000 volumes. Its postmodern architecture (most walls are see-through glass) contrasts the Gothic revival design of Main Library, which is located across from it through a plaza that contains a fountain and the 33.8-metre Leon Ladner Bell Tower (ringing every half an hour, sometimes with classical music). The Main Library contains the contents of the former Sedgewick library in its lower levels.

Current faculties and schools

• Faculty of Applied Science[4]
  • Departments of Engineering (incl. Electrical, Mechanical, Civil, Engineering Physics, Computer, Mining, Chemical, Metals & Materials and Integrated Engineering)
  • School of Architecture: based at the Lasserre Building
  • School of Nursing: based at the Koerner Pavilion
• Faculty of Arts[5]: based in the Buchanan Complex
  • The Department of Asian Studies features North America's largest Mandarin Chinese programme and one of the largest Japanese language programmes.
• School of Audiology and Speech Sciences [6]
• School of Community and Regional Planning [7]
• Continuing Studies Department[8]
• Faculty of Dentistry[9]: at the Macdonald Building
• Faculty of Education[10]: located in the Scarfe Building and the Ponderosa buildings E, F, G and H
• Faculty of Forestry[11]: based at the Forest Science Centre
• Faculty of Graduate Studies[12]: based at the Thea Koerner House Graduate Student Centre
• College of Health Disciplines [13]
• School of Human Kinetics[14]: based at the War Memorial Gym
• School of Journalism[15]: located at the Sing Tao Building
• Faculty of Land and Food Systems (formerly known as the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences)[16]; based at the MacMillan Building
• Faculty of Law [17]: based at the George F. Curtis Building
• School of Library, Archival and Information Studies[18]
• Faculty of Medicine[19]
• School of Music[20]: based at the Music Building
• School of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene[21]
• Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences: [22]based at the Cunningham Building
• School of Rehabilitation Sciences[23]
• Sauder School of Business[24]: based at Angus and David Lam Management Research Centre. It was, until June 5, 2005, known as the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration (still its formal name)
• Faculty of Science[25]
  • Departments of Zoology and Botany: based at the Biosciences Centre
  • Department of Physics and Astronomy ("PhysAstro"):
    • Physics Program: based at the Hebb Theatre and Hennings Building
    • Astronomy Program: based at the Geophysics and Astonomy Observatory Building
    • Engineering Physics Program: based in the Hennings Building
  • Department of Chemistry: based at the Chemistry Building
  • Department of Microbiology and Immunology: based at the Wesbrook Building
  • Department of Computer Science: based at the CICSR building (pronounced "caesar"), with most courses conducted at the new Hugh Dempster Pavilion.
  • Department of Mathematics: based at the Mathematic Annex and Building
  • Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences: based at the EOS Main Building (formerly Geological Sciences Building)
• School of Social Work and Family Studies:[26] based at the Jack Bell Building

Alumni

The most famous alumni from UBC include:

• Nobel laureate in Physics, Bertram N. Brockhouse
• Nobel laureate in Economics, Robert Mundell
• mathematician and pi researcher Peter Borwein
• mathematician and chemist Charlotte Froese Fischer, famous for the development of the Multi-configurational self-consistent field method
• founder, Texas Instruments, Cecil H. Green
• CEO and Chairman of the Board, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Henry A. McKinnell
• CEO, Computer Associates, John Swainson
• former Canadian prime ministers Kim Campbell and John Turner
• senator Pat Carney
• past B.C. premiers Ujjal Dosanjh and Mike Harcourt
• Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
• composer Michael Conway Baker
• author and historian Pierre Berton
• actor Nicola Cavendish
• journalists Allan Fotheringham and Stevie Cameron
• writer William Gibson
• opera singers Ben Heppner and Judith Forst
• filmmaker Bruce Sweeney
• educator and Man In Motion, Rick Hansen
• activist Mark Satin
• astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason
• University of Victoria president Dr. David Turpin

Recipients of honorary degrees

• The 14th Dalai Lama
• Bishop Desmond Tutu
• Shirin Ebadi
• Raffi Cavoukian

Famous instructors

• Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel laureate in Medicine 1968
• Michael Smith, Nobel laureate in Chemistry 1993
• David Suzuki, biologist
• Meryn Cadell, writer and performance artist

Sites of interest

Gardens

• UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research [27]: the first UBC department, it holds a collection of over 8000 different kinds of plants used for research, conservation and education
• Nitobe Memorial Garden [28]: built to honour Japanese scholar Inazo Nitobe, the garden has been the subject of more than fifteen years' study by a UBC professor, who believes that its construction hides a number of impressive features, including references to Japanese philosophy and mythology, shadow bridges visible only at certain times of year, and positioning of a lantern that is filled with light at the exact date and time of Nitobe's death each year. The garden is behind the university's Asian Center, whose roof features a glass and wood structure from Japan's exhibit at Tokyo Expo.

Museums and galleries

• Museum of Anthropology at UBC (MOA) [29]: mostly First Nations collections, such as totem poles. Also antique Chinese and European ceramics collections.
• Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery [30]: exhibit mostly contemporary North American art. Has two rooms (often divided into three).

Performance arts theatres

• Chan Centre for the Performing Arts: a concert hall and events centre; often the location of convocation ceremonies.
• Frederic Wood Theatre ("Freddy Wood Theatre"): plays performed here, mostly performed by UBC's own BFA drama students.

Student Clubs

• UBC has a vibrant campus community with over two hundred student run clubs, ranging from the Dance Club, to the Political Science Student Association, to Wine Tasting Club [31]. The club directory lists all of the clubs [32]

Student services and residences

• The Student Union Building (SUB) [33]: offices of many clubs, half a dozen restaurants and cafes, a pub, a nightclub, a video game arcade, and the inexpensive 425-seat Norman Bouchard Memorial Theatre ("The Norm Theatre"), several shops and a post office. The majority of the outlets and shops in the SUB are run by the AMS, however the addition of major corporate outlets in recent years has generated some controversy. The SUB Art Gallery contains mostly students' work. Beside the SUB, there is a small mound called The Grassy Knoll, which was constructed from the contents of the open pool dug near the Aquatic Centre. The Grassy Knoll is slated to be destroyed due to the planned construction of an underground bus loop; the destruction is an unpopular move among students.
• Totem Park: A residence primarily for first and second year undergraduate students (houses 1163).
• Place Vanier: A residence primarily for first and second year undergraduate students (houses 1370).
• Gage Towers: A residence primarily for second and third year undergraduate students.
• Fairview: A residence primarily for second, and third year undergraduate students.
• Thunderbird: A residence primarily for graduate students and fourth year undergraduate students.
• Ritsumeikan-UBC House: A residence with a Japanese cultural setting, named for Ritsumeikan University. Houses Japanese exchange students and Canadian students, who participate in unique intercultural programmes. The residence's tatami room is used for practice sessions by the UBC Urasenke Japanese tea ceremony club.
• Marine Drive Residence: A new residence with target opening date of Fall 2005.
• Green College: A residential college for graduate students with an interdisciplinary focus.
• St. John's College: A residential college for graduate students with an international focus.

Tuition

In 2001-02, UBC had one of the lowest undergraduate tuition rates in Canada, at an average of $2,181 CAD per year for a full-time program. This was due to a tuition freeze instituted by the New Democratic Party (NDP) government.

In 2001, however, the Liberal government came into power and lifted the tuition freeze. In 2002-03 undergraduate and graduate tuition rose by an average of 30%, and by up to 40% in some faculties. This has led to increased enrolment and better facilities, but also to student unrest and union strikes.

UBC again increased tuition by 30% in the 2003-04 season, again by approximately 15% in the 2004-05 season, and 2% in the 2005-06 season. Increases were lower than expected because, in the 2005 Throne Speech, the Liberal government capped tuition increases to be on par with inflation.

Sports and recreation

• Aquatic Centre [34]: at designated times students can use the facility for free.
• Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre: when unused during final exam periods (December and May), hundreds of chairs and tables are placed inside for students to take examinations.
• In between Main and Koerner Libraries is an artificial 6-metre deep valley, whose massive amount of dirt was transported to a bog in the Pacific Spirit Park decades ago, now being criticized as an anti-environmental act. The valley was intended as a student gathering place for eating lunches, meeting and relaxing. But it is mostly unused due to its lack of visibility, dangerously slippery muddy grass, and its relative inaccessibility.
• There is a rock-climbing wall in the SUB, hidden behind the movie theatre screen, which is operated by the UBC Varsity Outdoor Club.[35]
• The UBC Bike Hub, which houses the AMS Bike Co-op and the Bike Kitchen. The Bike Kitchen is a full service student-run non-profit bike shop, which also runs workshops and provides one-on-one instruction.[36]
• The UBC Debating Society is the only debating team in Canada that is a part of a university's varsity athletics program.[37]
• The Student Recreation Centre houses a gymnasium, sports equipment shop, dojo, and climbing wall, in addition to rooms for special exercise programmes.
• The neighboring Pacific Spirit Regional Park has an extensive network of running trails. On the coast to the west of campus, the park includes Wreck Beach, one of the largest clothing-optional beaches in the world.

Student media

• The Ubyssey [38], a twice-weekly student newspaper. Established in 1916.
• The Graduate [39], a monthly magazine of news, opinion, and humour, by graduate students.
• Discorder ("That magazine from CiTR") [40], a music and entertainment magazine produced by the campus radio station.
• CITR "Thunderbird Radio" [41], the campus radio station.
• The Point, a weekly student paper of athletics, clubs, and whats happening at UBC.
• The Underground, a satirical newspaper of the Arts Undergraduate Society with a vibrant arts and culture section, The Grounder.
• The 432, a humorous, biweekly publication of the Science Undergraduate Society.
• The Paradigm [42], an academic publication of the Science Undergraduate Society.

Athletics

UBC is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the UBC Thunderbirds.

List of Presidents

1. Frank Wesbrook (1913-1918)
2. Leonard Klinck (1919-1944)
3. Norman MacKenzie (1944-1962))
4. John B. Macdonald (1962-1967)
5. Fredrick Kenneth Hare (1968-1969))
6. Walter Harry Gage (1969-1975)
7. Douglas Kenny (1975-1983)
8. George Pedersen (1983-1985)
9. Robert Smith (1985)
10. David W. Strangway (1985-1997)
11. Martha C. Piper (1997-2006)

See also

• University of British Columbia Alma Mater Society

External link

• UBC home page

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