This article is about the Canadian university. For the British university, see University of York.
York University
106, 107, 196, Viva Orange from Downsview Other routes York University (French: Université York), located in Toronto, Ontario, is Canada's third-largest university and has produced several of the country's top leaders in the fields of law, politics, business, space sciences, and fine arts. York supports a student population of approximately 50,000 and staff of 7,000, as well as 200,000 alumni worldwide. It is home to 11 faculties, including the Schulich School of Business, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, as well as 23 research centres. A young university, it has been growing over time and gaining international recognition in several fields most notably law and management as reflected by the joint programs it now has with New York University and Northwestern University respectively. York University has always enjoyed a strong participation in the Canadian Space Program and the Faculty of Science and Engineering has designed several space research instruments and applications currently used by NASA.
History
York University attracts and grooms some of the most promising students of Canada and has produced the current directors and CEOs of almost all the major banks in Canada (Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, TD Bank, BMO), the largest and most prominent media networks in Canada (CTV, Rogers Communications, CBC), and numerous judges, diplomats, and senior politicians including the current Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada, the Minister of Finance of Canada, the Attorney General of Ontario, the President of the Privy Council of Canada and the Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations.
Astronaut Steve MacLean was educated at York University in the physics department and later taught there before going to work at NASA.
Canada's youngest billionaire, Alex Shnaider, is also a graduate of York University.
York's approximately 1,350 full-time faculty and academic librarians are represented by the York University Faculty Association. Contract faculty, teaching assistants, and graduate assistants are represented by CUPE Local 3903.
Academics
York University has eleven faculties. Several of these faculties' programs overlap. The Faculties of Arts, Science & Engineering, Liberal & Professional Studies (Atkinson), and Glendon College, for instance, each house separate mathematics departments, although some of these are being merged; the Schulich School of Business (which ranked 1st among Canadian business schools in 2006 by The Economist, The Financial Times, and Forbes and 3rd in the world in a global ranking of MBA programs conducted by the Aspen and World Resources Institutes, two US think tanks) offers undergraduate and graduate International Business Administration programmes, but the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies' School of Administrative Studies acts as a completely separate business school, nevertheless both Atkinson and Schulich share many full time professors. Also, Atkinson, Glendon, and Schulich units are offering or are in the processing of preparing to offer degrees in public policy and administration. The University administration has, however, taken steps in some cases to unify departments in separate faculties, in part to support York's efforts to brand itself as a university focused on interdisciplinarity. For example, the Faculty of Health, opened on 1 July 2006, houses the School of Health Policy & Management, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, School of Nursing, and the Department of Psychology (one of the largest in North America).
The Osgoode Hall Law School is one of Canada's oldest and most prestigious law schools, having moved from a downtown location to the York campus in 1969 following the requirement that every law school affiliate with a university. The law school is a top tier internationally recognized institution with several flexible degrees available including the Osgoode-NYU JD/LLB degree in conjunction with New York University School of Law.
York University offers the first and largest Graphic Design program in Ontario (Bachelor of Design Honours degree)[1]. It is a four-year University degree delivered jointly by the two leading educational institutions of design in Canada, York University and Sheridan College and recognized throughout North America for maintaining the highest academic and professional standards. The alumni demonstrate the excellence of the program through their placements into top design firms, national and international graduate study programs and their high rate of self-employment. The student's talent and dedication reflects itself at every opportunity. Students have received much recognition in regional, national and international competitions, and with private and government agencies in Canada, the USA and Europe. Retention is the highest in the university, in the mid 90s. Many students have received multiple offers to the leading graduate programs throughout the world in the fields of Design, Architecture, Business, Law, Environmental Studies and Education.
York University's Faculty of Graduate Studies offers graduate degrees in a variety of disciplines, and there are several joint graduate programs with the University of Toronto and Ryerson University.
The Ph.D. program at York in Social and Political Thought consistently ranks as one of Canada's best PhD programs as reflected by the number of times York U students in this program have won the award for best PhD thesis in Canada. The School of Women's Studies at York University offers a large array of courses in the field, some of which are offered in French. The Canadian Centre for Germanic and European Studiesis co-housed at York University and Université de Montréal. The Centre is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service.
Research Centres & Institutes:
Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry, Centre for Feminist Research, Centre for International and Security Studies, Centre for Jewish Studies, Centre for Practical Ethics, Centre for Public Law and Public Policy, Centre for Refugee Studies, Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science, Centre for Research in Mass Spectrometry, Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, Centre for Research on Work and Society, Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability, Institute for Research on Learning Technologies, York Institute for Social Research, The Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption, LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict Resolution, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York Centre for Asian Research, York Centre for Vision Research, York Institute for Health Research.
York is the only university in Canada to make Fine Arts its own faculty and has a world class art gallery (Art Gallery of York University at www.yorku.ca/agyu).The Faculty of Fine Arts is one of the most competitive in Canada, offering programs such as ethnomusicology and cultural studies as well as visual arts and music as well as dance and theatre. York's jazz department is particularly well-reputed and was once overseen by jazz great Oscar Peterson. York also has a joint Bachelor of Design program with Sheridan College. York's Departments of Film, Theatre and Creative Writing offer highly competitive programs in film production/directing, acting, and writing respectively, producing many award-winning graduates. The founder's of Toronto's critically acclaimed Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival and CineACTION film theory magazine were graduates of York's Faculty of Fine Arts.
York offers a Space & Communication Sciences undergraduate degree. York's Centre for Vision Research has developed a 'virtual reality room' called IVY (Immersive Virtual Environment at York) in order to study spatial orientation and perception of gravity and motion. The Canadian Space Agency and National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) use this room to strengthen astronauts' sense of 'up' and 'down' in zero-gravity environments. The room is a six-sided immersive environment made of the glass used in the CN Tower's observation deck and includes walls, ceiling, and a floor comprised of computer-generated pixel maps. York's Faculty of Science and Engineering most recently took part in the 2007 NASA Phoenix Mission to Mars.
York is also the only university in Canada with specialized programs in meteorological sciences at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Faculties
York's six libraries contain more than six-and-a-half million items including more than two million books and subscriptions to over 13,000 electronic journals. Scott Library is the largest of these and houses collections in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. Science-related items are at the Steacie Science Library, while the Osgoode Hall Law School houses the largest law library in the Commonwealth. The Leslie Frost library is located at Glendon College and houses collections in all disciplines with a significant proportion of research materials in the French language. The Peter F. Bronfman Business Library, in addition to print materials, gives access to dozens of e-resources such as the Bloomberg Terminal. Finally, the Clara Thomas Archives contains the literary and personal papers of many notable Canadian cultural figures such as Margaret Laurence, Rohinton Mistry, Adele Wiseman, bill bissett, and others. The Government of Ontario announced in December 2006 that it would relocate the Archives of Ontario from rented facilities on Grenville Street to the Keele campus. A new building will house the archives and provide room for university researchers. The building is scheduled for completion in 2009.
Libraries
The University is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the York Lions. Beginning in 1968 York's sporting teams were known as the "Yeomen", after the Yeomen Warders, the guardians of the fortress and palace at the Tower of London, otherwise known as Beefeaters. Later, the name "Yeowomen" was introduced to encourage women to participate in sports, as "Yeomen" was deemed to be gender-specific. Popular sentiment ran against this name scheme, however, as many students were fond of noting that a "Yeowoman" was fictitious, neither a real word nor having any historical merit. In 2003, after conducting an extensive internal study, the University replaced both names with the "Lions", as part of a larger re-branding effort, and a new logo, now a white and red lion, was brought into line with the university's new visual scheme. The name change also brought York University in line with the 92% of other Canadian universities which use a single name for both genders' sports teams. Ironically, students often refer to the female Lions teams as the "York Lionesses", despite the fact that the name "Lion" is intended to apply to both genders. [2]
SportYork offers 29 interuniversity sport teams, 12 sport clubs, 35 intramural sport leagues, special events and 10 pick-up sport activities offered daily.
York U has several athletic facilities, some of which are used for major tournaments. These include a football stadium, 4 gymnasia, 5 sport playing fields, 4 softball fields, 9 outdoor tennis courts, 5 squash courts, 3 dance/aerobic studios, an ice arena, a swimming pool, an expanding fitness centre and the new Rexall Centre (home of the Rogers Tennis Cup).
In 2005, plans were made to build a new football and soccer stadium to host the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League as well as future football tournaments. These plans were scuttled, however, when a deal was signed by the Argos to remain at the Rogers Centre. York's proximity to many of Toronto's cricket-playing communities and role as host of an annual "York is U" cricket tournament has led to speculation that the university might act as a permanent home for Canada's cricket program.
Athletics
Keele Campus, York's primary campus, is located in North York and most of the University's faculties reside here. The Schulich School of Business and Osgoode Hall Law School each have a satellite campus in the business district of Toronto, however. That of Schulich is the Miles S. Nadal Management Centre, and that of Osgoode Hall Law School is the Professional Development Centre and is located in the Dundas West Tower at the Toronto Eaton Centre.
Glendon College, a bilingual liberal arts faculty which conducts its own recruitment and admissions and hosts its own academic programs, is also housed on its own campus on Bayview Avenue in North Toronto. Glendon is the only university-level institution in Southern Ontario that offers university courses in both French and English; others elsewhere in Ontario include the University of Ottawa and Laurentian University in Sudbury. A shuttle bus runs regularly between the Glendon and the Keele campuses.
Campuses
Major buildings (Keele Campus)The Accolade Project comprises two new buildings, Accolade East and Accolade West, which frame the existing Fine Arts complex on the south side of The Common at the heart of York University's Keele campus. The new structures offer a wide range of academic, exhibition and performance facilities for teaching, learning, research, creative work and public presentation. The Accolade Project offers state-of-the-art facilities for Canada's future artists and performers, and has been billed as the new flagship centre for fine arts education in the GTA. Complementing the facilities of the Faculty of Fine Arts in the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, Burton Auditorium, the Centre for Film and Theatre, and the Technology-Enhanced Learning Building, Accolade brings all seven fine arts departments together in one dynamic cluster as the cultural hub of the campus.
Accolade East and West
Both the Department of Music and the Department of Dance have a new home with dedicated, state-of-the-art facilities in Accolade East. The celebrated Art Gallery of York University has also moved into Accolade East. Located east of the Centre for Film and Theatre, facing the Schulich School of Business, Accolade East features extensive exhibition and performing arts facilities, The Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre, and The Recital Hall, including the main box office, as well as classrooms and an open-access, 24-hour computer lab serving the entire university.
Accolade East
Located north of the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts and adjacent to Burton Auditorium, Accolade West is used by students from across the university. A four-storey building dedicated primarily to academic studies, the building houses a full roster of 'smart' classrooms, seminar rooms and computer labs ranging in capacity from 40 to 400 seats, all featuring a full complement of cutting-edge technology, clear sightlines and accessible seating. The spacious main floor lobby, enhanced by a soaring atrium spanning the entire height of the building, offers a welcoming entrance into the Fine Arts complex. It houses the student-run gallery of the Department of Visual Arts as well as two new studios for the Fine Arts Cultural Studies program in the Faculty of Fine Arts.
Accolade West
The Curtis Lecture Halls and Ross Building was once the entrance or main door of York University from the 1960s until the opening of Vari Hall in 1992.
Curtis Lecture Halls is a 3-4 floor complex of lecture halls of varying sizes built in 1971. Connected through a hallway, to the east of the halls is the Ross Building, containing offices of professors, faculty offices and the Senate. Curtis Lecture Halls was named for Air Vice-Marshal Wilfrid A. Curtis, founding organizing committee and first Chancellor of York (1959-1968).
The Ross building opened in 1966 is named for the late Dr. Murray G. Ross, founding president of York (1960-1970) and law professor at the University of Toronto. It was originally called Humanities and Social Sciences building .
Curtis Lecture Halls and the Ross Building
Vari Hall is a building primarily containing lecture rooms. Built in 1992 by Raymond Moriyama, a $2 million donation and other cost were covered by George and Helen Vari, Hungarian refugees and businesspersons. The 3 storey rotunda of the hall has become a meeting place for students and, occasionally, protestors.
The building looks out towards the York Commons, a park at the university. Prior to the Hall's construction, a massive ramp provided access to the Ross Building from the Commons. York's crest adorns the outer face of the rotunda.
Vari Hall
York Commons is a park enclosed by the main buildings at York, including:
A roadway circulating the park and the buildings serves solely for use by TTC, VIVA, YRT and GO buses. In the future, the commons will feature a subway stop from the new Spadina subway line extension. A shallow pool, often the temporary home to Canada Geese and ducks, and a fountain are also located in the tree-lined park.
Student Centre
Vari Hall
York University Student Centre (for which the architect received a Governor General's award and the Award of Excellence from The Canadian Architect)
York Lanes - retail mall, book store and office space for teaching staff
Centre for Film and Theatre
Accolade East and Accolade West York Commons
York Lanes is a two storey mall at the Keele campus of York University in Toronto, Ontario.
The lower level has restaurants and retail stores including the York University Bookstore at the East end. Also housed in the mall is the Campus Cove (an arcade/LAN gaming centre/pool hall) and the on-campus medical office. Offices for faculty of various departments as well as various student groups are located on the second floor.
The layout of the mall is rectangular (long in the East-West direction). It is divided into three sections (arbitrarily based on the bends of the corridor, and not on any other difference between the sections or their contents). One main corridor runs along its length. Slightly diagonal towards the South-West corner at the start (the West Market), then East-West (The Main Wing), and finally turning south for a short span at the East end (the East Market). There is one branch off to a North exit where the West Market meets the Main Wing (where the corridor bends), and there is also a door to a narrow passageway at the West end (just adjacent to the bookstore and opposite the main East exit) to another back exit to the North.
York Lanes
Prior to 1989, membership in a fraternity or sorority at York University was forbidden. In 1989, the related senate resolution was revoked and replaced with Presidential Regulation Number 5 which does not forbid membership but rather denies official status to fraternities and sororities at York University. The reasons given in this regulation are that fraternities and sororities deflect students from participation in the College system, that their commitment to exclusivity is in conflict with York's principles of inclusivity (no student club is allowed to deny membership except on the grounds of major, for those organisations with representation to their department), and are often associated with inappropriate conduct. Over the years, however, four fraternities and three sororities have operated, unofficially, on campus:
Fraternities:
Sororities:
Phi Delta Phi (ΦΔΦ) international legal fraternity, at Osgoode Law School, was given special dispensation when the law school became part of the university, as the fraternity's history with the law school dated back to 1896, and is recognized at York.
Alpha Epsilon Pi (ΑΕΠ) - (Eta Pi Chapter - York University)
Phi Delta Theta (ΦΔΘ) - (Ontario Delta Chapter - York University)
Phi Kappa Pi (ΦΚΠ) - (Sigma Pi Chapter - York University)
Sigma Alpha Mu (ΣΑΜ) - (Gamma Omicron Chapter - York University)
Alpha Kappa Alpha (ΑΚΑ) - [3]
Delta Pi (ΔΠ) - (Local)
Sigma Delta Tau (ΣΔΤ) - Gamma Omicron Chapter (inactive) Fraternities and Sororities
York is Canada's largest university, with over 50,000 students enrolled. Most students come from the Greater Toronto Area, but there is a sizeable population of students from across Canada and abroad. To serve this large population, there are 225 student clubs and organisations; two student-run publications and three broadcast programs; six art galleries; 33 on-campus eateries; and a retail mall. Undergraduate students at York are represented by the York Federation of Students, a student-elected body that sponsors most of the clubs and engages in lobbying with the university administration and the provincial and federal governments. While the YFS is one of the largest student associations in Canada (by virtue of York's large undergraduate population), it has often come under fire for being too political rather than focusing on student specific issues.
Students
York has nine undergraduate residential colleges:
--Also, for a bit of trivia, the different houses that make up Founders Residence are actually named after the Group of Seven (Varley House, Harris House, etc.), or as the plaque at the building says, 'The Founders of Canadian Art."
Atkinson 1961- named after The Toronto Star founding publisher Joseph E. Atkinson
Bethune 1970 - named after Dr. Norman Bethune
Calumet 1970 - a native nations word for "Peacepipe"
Founders 1965 - named after the founders of the university
Glendon 1966 - a combination of "glen", meaning "valley", and "Don" for the Don River.
McLaughlin 1968 - after Samuel McLaughlin, patron and manufacturer. (The affiliated residence, Tatham Hall, is named for a former Master of the College and Professor George Tatham. [4].)
Stong 1970 - named after the family on whose land is the main campus
Vanier 1965 - named after Governor General Georges Vanier
Winters 1968 - named after former federal cabinet Minister Robert Winters Colleges
Arts (AS)[5]
Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies (AK)[6]
Education (ED)
Environmental Studies (ES)[7]
Fine Arts (FA)[8]
Glendon College (GL)
Graduate Studies (GS)
Health (HH)[9]
Osgoode Hall Law School (OS)
Schulich School of Business (SB)
Science and Engineering (SC)[10]
York University & Sheridan College Bachelors of Design Honours (YSDN)[11] Faculties and abbreviations
The Keele campus is host to a satellite facility of Seneca College, Seneca@York, and York University offers a number of joint programs with Seneca College:
School of Communication Arts
Computer Studies
Biological Science and Applied Chemistry
Corporate and Technical Communications Seneca@York
Noted alumni
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