University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa, often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, the capital city of Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ottawa across the Rideau Canal in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood.
The University of Ottawa was first established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the first bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa, Joseph-Bruno Guigues. Placed under the direction of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, it was renamed the College of Ottawa in 1861 and received university status five years later through a royal charter. On 5 February 1889, the university was granted a pontifical charter by Pope Leo XIII, elevating the institution to a pontifical university. The university was reorganized on July 1, 1965, as a corporation, independent from any outside body or religious organization. As a result, the civil and pontifical charters were kept by the newly created Saint Paul University, federated with the university. The remaining civil faculties were retained by the reorganized university.
The University of Ottawa is the largest English-French bilingual university in the world. The university offers a wide variety of academic programs, administered by ten faculties: Arts, Education, Engineering, Health Sciences, Law, Medicine, Science, Social Sciences, and the Telfer School of Management. The University of Ottawa Library includes 12 branches, holding a collection of over 5.9 million titles. The university is a member of the Canadian U15 group of research-intensive universities, with a research income of in 2022.
The school is co-educational and enrols almost 40,000 undergraduate and over 6,000 post-graduate students. The school has enrolled 2,300 students into the French Immersion Studies program in fall 2022. The school has approximately 10,600 international students from 150 countries, accounting for 26 per cent of the student population. The university has a network of more than 250,000 alumni. The university's athletic teams are known as the Gee-Gees and are members of U Sports.
History
The university was established on September 26, 1848 as the College of Bytown by the first Roman Catholic bishop of Ottawa, Joseph-Bruno Guigues. He entrusted administration to the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The college was originally located in Lower Town, housed in a wooden building next to the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica. However, space quickly became an issue for administrators, triggering two moves in 1852 and a final move to Sandy Hill in 1856. The Sandy Hill property was donated by Louis-Théodore Besserer, where he offered a substantial parcel from his estate for the college. The college was renamed College of Ottawa in 1861, following the city's name change from Bytown to Ottawa. In 1866, the college received its first charter, as well as university status, making it the final institution in Canada to receive a royal charter from London before the British North America Act, 1867 made education a provincial responsibility. By 1872 the university had already begun to confer undergraduate degrees, with master's degrees coming in 1875 and doctoral degrees in 1888. On February 5, 1889, the university was granted a pontifical charter from Pope Leo XIII, elevating the university to a pontifical university.The university faced a crisis when fire destroyed the main building on 2 December 1903. After the fire, the university hired New York architect A. O. Von Herbulis to design its replacement, Tabaret Hall. It was among the first Canadian structures to be completely fireproof, built of reinforced concrete. Women first enrolled in 1919.
In the fall of 1939, a Canadian Officer Training Corp was established at the university, with training beginning in January 1940. The Canadian Officers' Training Corps, University of Ottawa Contingent, which comprised a company, headquarters and three platoons in 1939, was authorized to become a battalion in 1940. By 1941, the unit swelled to 550 men. An air force Officers' Training Corp was created in 1942 and a naval Officers' training corp in 1943. Participation in one of the three corps became mandatory for all students over 18, although they were not obliged to participate in the actual war at the end of their studies. During this time, the Royal Canadian Air Force used parts of the university's grounds for training and the university constructed barracks to house members of the Canadian Women's Army Corps. In total 1,158 students and alumni of the university enrolled the Canadian Forces during the Second World War, of which 50 died overseas. The unit was eventually disbanded during the unification of the Armed Forces in 1968.
The Ottawa architecture firm of Burgess, McLean & MacPhadyen designed the Eastern Ontario Institute of Technology, opened its new Rideau Campus on a 12-acre city owned Lees Avenue site in 1964. After being unused for a number of years, the midcentury academic complex was sold to the University of Ottawa in January 2007.
The university was reorganized on 1 July 1965 as a corporation independent from any outside body or religious organization, becoming publicly funded. As a result, the civil and pontifical charters were transferred to the newly created Saint Paul University, federated with the corporation, while the remaining civil faculties were retained by the reorganized university.
In 1970, 100 Laurier East became property of the University of Ottawa, acquired at a cost of $1,120,900. Previously named Juniorat du Sacré-Coeur, the property became the university's oldest building after it was acquired. At a cost of $28,000, it was built by Joseph Bourque, a Hull contractor and church builder, and completed in 1894. The Juniorat du Sacré-Coeur provided classical education for young men who wished to pursue a religious life and join the Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The building was expanded in 1937, an expansion that was indistinguishable from the original structure. The huge cross that used to dominate the top of the building was removed after its purchase, leaving only small references to the building's religious history as the Juniorat du Sacré-Coeur. The property now houses the university's department of Visual Arts. It is located at the corner of Laurier Avenue and Cumberland Street, near the Rideau Canal.
In 1974, a new policy mandated by the Government of Ontario strengthened institutional bilingualism at the university, with specific instructions to further bilingualism and biculturalism and preserve and develop French culture.
In 1989, Dr. Wilbert Keon of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute performed the country's first neonatal artificial heart transplant on an 11-day-old baby.
On 11 November 1998, during the University of Ottawa's 150th-anniversary celebrations, two war memorial plaques were unveiled in the foyer of Tabaret Hall which honour 1000 graduates of the university community who took part in armed conflict, especially the list of 50 graduates who lost their lives.
The engineering building, Colonel By Hall, was unveiled in September 2005 as a memorial dedicated to Lieutenant-Colonel John By, Royal Engineers.
Campus
The university's main campus is situated within the neighbourhood of Sandy Hill. The main campus is bordered to the north by the ByWard Market district, to the east by Sandy Hill's residential area, and to the southwest by Nicholas Street, which runs adjacent to the Rideau Canal on the western half of the university. As of the 2010–2011 academic year, the main campus occupied, though the university owns and manages other properties throughout the city, raising the university's total extent to. The main campus moved two times before settling in its final location in 1856. When the institution was first founded, the campus was located next to the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica. With space a major issue in 1852, the campus moved to a location that is now across from the National Gallery of Canada. In 1856, the institution moved to its present location.The buildings at the university vary in age from 100 Laurier to 150 Louis-Pasteur Private. In 2011 the average age of buildings was 63. In the 2011–2012 academic year, the university owned and managed 30 main buildings, 806 research laboratories, 301 teaching laboratories and 257 classrooms and seminar rooms. The main campus is divided between its older Sandy Hill campus and its Lees campus, purchased in 2007. While Lees Campus is not adjacent to Sandy Hill, it is displayed as part of the main campus on school maps. Lees campus, within walking distance of Sandy Hill, was originally a satellite campus owned by Algonquin College.
An O-Train station, uOttawa station, is situated on the western periphery of the campus adjacent to Nicholas Street and the Rideau Canal.
Library
The University of Ottawa Library is a network of twelve locations, and maintains a collection of approximately two million printed books, one million e-books, 423,986 maps, 87,216 music items and more with its collection budget of. The Library has digitized over 20,000 French books and some of the aerial photographs from the National Air Photo Library collection which are in the public domain. In addition, with consent from the National Aboriginal Health Organization's Board of Directors, the Library and the Indigenous Program at the Faculty of Medicine archived the NAHO's website using Archive It which is no longer publicly available.The main library is in Morisset Hall, which also houses the Media Centre, Archives and Special Collections, and the Geographic, Statistical and Government Information Centre. The university has five other specialized libraries: the Brian Dickson Law Library, located in Fauteux Hall; the Health Sciences Library, located at the Roger-Guindon campus; the Management Library, located in the Desmarais Building; the Isobel Firestone Music Library, located in Pérez Hall; and the Annex, an off-site storage facility that houses less-used portions of the collection.
The Morisset Library was named for Auguste-Marie Morisset who was a chief librarian from 1934 to 1958 and the Brian Dickson Law Library was named for Brian Dickson who was the chief justice of Canada. The Archives and Special Collections in Morisett Library contains holdings on a variety of subjects, particularly on feminism movement in Canada and it has the largest collection of feminist publications in Canada from periodicals and newsletters including Branching Out and Broadside. In addition, in 2018, the Archives and Special Collections collaborated with the Library and Archives Canada and the International Network of Women Engineers and Scientists – Education and Research Institute founded by Monique Frize for the project of Canadian Archive of Women in STEM to develop a search index portal to facilitate discovery in one central location.
In addition to housing the university's collections, the library also maintains the Learning Crossroads, which features two lecture halls and more than 1,000 individual and group study rooms. It houses a wide range of cutting-edge technologies like a video wall, featuring a large 8K screen, virtual reality equipment and multimedia studios. The University of Ottawa Library is a member of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Ontario Council of University Libraries.