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McGill University

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McGill University is a publicly funded, research-intensive, non-denominational, co-educational university located in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821, McGill is considered to be one of the best universities in Canada. International university rankings such as the European Union, Gourman Report, Princeton Review, and the Times Higher Education Supplement place McGill among the top 100 global universities. In 2005, McGill was ranked 24th in the world (1st in Canada and 13th in North-America) by the Times Higher Education Supplement. In the same year, the European Union ranked McGill 79th (3rd in Canada) and in 1998, the Gourman Report placed McGill on top in their list of the best Canadian universities for Undergraduate Programs. [1] In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked McGill 21st in the world and 12th in North America (the highest of any Canadian university). The Times study in particular recognized McGill as having "by far the most international faculty of any university in North America's top 50 and it also has the highest percentage of international students."

In 2005, McGill ranked first as Canada's "Research University of the Year" by Research Infosource. Gross research funding at McGill ranked second among Canada's top 50 research universities and for research funding normalized to number of faculty members, McGill ranked first with $381,100 per faculty member. McGill has the most per faculty research dollars nationwide from federal and provincial sources of funding (including CFI, NSERC and other organizations) [2]

In the Macleans 2005 Canadian University Rankings, McGill is tied with the University of Toronto for the 1st place in the medical-doctoral category.

Faculties

McGill's academic units are divided among eleven faculties and a number of schools, the Centre for Continuing Education and Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

Campus

File:Mcgill-u.jpg
The Arts Building
Roddick Gates

The main campus is situated in downtown Montréal at the foot of Mount Royal. Most of the buildings are situated in a park-like campus north of rue Sherbrooke between rue Peel and rue Aylmer and south of Avenue Docteur-Penfield west of rue Peel (near Peel and McGill metro stations).

A secondary campus, the Macdonald Campus, is in the district of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. Founded in 1905, this campus, known as Macdonald College until 1972, is some 32 kilometres from downtown Montreal on the western tip of the Island of Montreal. The Macdonald Campus is the home of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Science, the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition and the McGill School of Environment.

The architecture of the downtown campus is an eclectic mix reflecting the various periods in which the buildings were erected, although they are all constructed using local grey limestone, which serves as a unifying element.

Students

Famous Mount-Royal as seen from McGill campus.

McGill's student population includes 21,765 undergraduates and 9,160 graduate students (2004/05). McGill has a higher percentage of international students than any other Canadian university. This is partially due to an admissions policy that reserves a quota of spaces for international students. Although the university is one of two English-language universities in Montreal, 19.6% of students at McGill speak French as their first language.

The Quebec government has long favored international students from selected countries (such as some members of La Francophonie) to attend their universities over students from other Canadian provinces. Since 1996 it is more expensive for an out-of-province Canadian student to attend McGill than it is for many foreigners from countries that have special agreements with Quebec (e.g., France). This, in addition to McGill's international reputation, partially accounts for why McGill has a high percentage of foreign students. Nevertheless, due to Montreal's relatively low cost of living, some students paying out-of-province tuition find it less expensive to attend McGill than universities in their home province.

McGill also attracts a growing number of American students who are attracted by the ability to obtain a top-tier education at a much lower cost than would be possible at a private American university like Harvard or Columbia.

Student life is varied and vibrant reflecting the many cultures and tastes of the students and of Montreal in general. McGill University ranked first overall in the category of "Campus race/class relations friendliest" in The Princeton Review: The Best 357 Colleges. McGill ranked third for "Great college towns."

Typical McGill Ghetto street, in August

A large number of McGill's students live in an area informally known as the McGill Ghetto, that lies east of the main university grounds. The area is bordered by rue Sherbrooke and rue University to the south and west and by Avenue des Pins and Avenue du Parc to the north and east. The neighborhood architecture is mostly made up of historical townhouses built in the 1900s to house wealthy businessmen working close-by in downtown office buildings, before the Exodus and subsequent moves to other boroughs such as Westmount and to the suburbs. In 2003 the University acquired the former Renaissance Montréal hotel at Avenue du Parc and rue Prince-Arthur and transformed it into an undergraduate student residence thereby increasing the student population in the ghetto by 650 people. The yet-unnamed residence is currently reffered to as "New Rez". Older residences (respectively named Douglas, Gardner, McConnell and Molson halls) are located on Mount Royal itself, past the McGill-affiliated Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal Neurological Institute and the university's sports complex. Other undergraduate residences include Royal Victoria College, MORE houses, Greenbriar apartments and Solin Hall (which is off campus.) The limits of the ghetto are historically set but some might say it now extends much further to the east and north, in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough.

History

James McGill, the Original Benefactor of McGill University

In 1813, James McGill, a Scottish immigrant who prospered in Montreal, bequeathed his 46 acre (186,000 m²) estate and 10,000 pounds to "the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning." McGill College (now McGill University) was inaugurated in 1829 in Burnside Place, James McGill's country home. In 1843, the University constructed its first buildings, the central and east wings of the Arts Building.

In 1905, the University acquired a second campus when Sir William C. Macdonald endowed a college in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, 32 kilometres west of Montreal, today the site of McGill's Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, and the Institute of Parasitology.

Facts and trivia

  • McGill professors have been facing lower compensation than their peers in other universities, which in part caused the departure of numerous renowned faculty members. [3] This issue has been improving in recent years.
  • McGill was the first non-denominational university in the British Empire.
  • It is one of only two Canadian universities holding a membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization comprising research-intensive North American research universities. (The other Canadian university member is the University of Toronto.)
  • McGill is one of only two Canadian universities with membership in Universitas 21, an international assocation of research-driven universities. (The other Canadian member is the University of British Columbia.)
  • McGill has four Nobel Prize-winning graduates, and three more Nobel laureates who were former faculty/staff.
  • McGill is the alma mater to two Canadian prime ministers.
  • McGill has produced 125 Rhodes Scholars, more than any other Canadian University
  • In the motion picture arts, McGill has produced 7 Academy Awards winners.
  • McGill's MBA program has been been ranked 39th in the world and 4th in Canada by the Financial Times in 2005.[4]
  • McGill has consistently ranked among the top 4 medical/doctoral universities nationwide, in the Maclean's rankings, an annual ranking of Canadian universities.
  • McGill's class of 1952 includes William Shatner, who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. Students have (unofficially) named McGill's Student Union building after him, although the University refuses to recognize this.
  • McGill's Bellairs Research Institute & campus on the island of Barbados serves as Canada's only teaching and research facility in the tropics. These facilities are used by such entities as the Canadian Space Agency for research.
  • McGill's Redpath Museum, commissioned in 1880 and opened in 1882, is the oldest building built specifically as a museum in North America. Its natural history collections boast material collected by the same individuals who founded the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum and the Smithsonian.
  • It is a little known fact that the inventions of hockey, basketball and North American football are all related to McGill in some way. The first game of North American football was played between McGill and Harvard in 1874.
  • Established in 1871, McGill's mining engineering program is the oldest in Canada. It is the second oldest program of its kind in North America, behind the one offered at Colorado School of Mines.
  • In terms of contributions to computing, MUSIC/SP, a piece of software for mainframes, once popular among universities and colleges around the world at its time, was developed at McGill. A team also contributed to the development of Archie, one of the pre-WWW search engines. A 3270 terminal emulator developed at McGill was commercialized and later sold to Hummingbird Software.
  • The university is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the McGill Redmen (men's) and the McGill Martlets (women's).
  • McGill students maintain a friendly rivalry with Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Nevertheless, the two share a successful publishing house (McGill-Queen's University Press).
  • There has been a McGill competitor at every Olympic Games since 1900.
  • The fictional Canadian superhero Sasquatch, a.k.a. Dr. Walter Langkowski, is described as a professor in McGill university.

Symbols

The university's symbol is the martlet; its motto is Grandescunt Aucta Labore (by work, all things grow). Inscribed in its arms is In Domino Confido (I trust in the Lord), James McGill's personal motto. Its sports teams are named Martlets (women) and Redmen (men), and its school colours are red and white. The school song is entitled "Hail, Alma Mater." The lyrics to the song are as follows:

Hail, Alma Mater, we sing to thy praise;
Loud in thy Honour, our voices we raise.
Full to thy fortune, our glasses we fill.
Life and Prosperity, Dear Old McGill.
Hail, Alma Mater, thy praises we sing:
Far down the centuries, still may they ring.
Long through the ages remain — if God will,
Queen of the Colleges, Dear Old McGill.

List of Chancellors

  1. Charles Dewey Day (1864-1884)
  2. James Ferrier (1884-1888)
  3. Sir Donald Alexander Smith, Lord Strathcona (1889-1914)
  4. Sir William Christopher Macdonald (1914-1917)
  5. Sir Robert Laird Borden (1918-1920)
  6. Sir Edward Wentworth Beatty (1921-1942)
  7. Morris Watson Wilson (1943-1946)
  8. Orville Sievwright Tyndale (1946-1952)
  9. Bertie Charles Gardner (1952-1957)
  10. Ray Edwin Powell (1957-1964)
  11. Howard Irwin Ross (1964-1970)
  12. Donald Olding Hebb (1970-1974)
  13. Stuart Milner Finlayson (1975)
  14. Conrad Fetherstonhaugh Harrington (1976-1984)
  15. A. Jean de Grandpré (1984-1991)
  16. Gretta Chambers (1991-1999)
  17. Richard W. Pound (1999- )

List of Principals

  1. George Jehoshaphat Mountain (1824-1835)
  2. John Bethune (1835-1846)
  3. Edmund Allen Meredith (1846-1853)
  4. Charles Dewey Day (1853-1855)
  5. Sir John William Dawson (1855-1893)
  6. Sir William Peterson (1895-1919)
  7. Sir Auckland Campbell Geddes (1919-1920)
  8. General Sir Arthur Currie (1920-1933)
  9. Arthur Eustace Morgan (1935-1937)
  10. Lewis Williams Douglas (1937-1939)
  11. Frank Cyril James (1939-1962)
  12. Harold Rocke Robertson (1962-1970)
  13. Robert Edward Bell (1970-1979)
  14. David Lloyd Johnston (1979-1994)
  15. Bernard Shapiro (1994-2002)
  16. Heather Munroe-Blum (2003-)

Noted alumni and professors

Academics and scholars

Current presidents of other Canadian universities

Business and media

Politics and government

Art, music, and film

Inventors

Others

Nobel Prize Graduates and Faculty Members

Hospitals

McGill University is affiliated with seven teaching hospitals in Montreal, four of which compose the McGill University Health Centre:

See also

Other universities in Montreal:

Wikimedia Commons has media related to McGill University.
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