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York University

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This article is about the Canadian university. For the British university, see University of York.
York University
File:Yorkucrest.gif
Motto Tentanda via (Latin: The way must be tried)
Founded 1959
School type Public
President Lorna Marsden
Location Toronto, Ontario
Campus size 2.6 km² (650 acres)
Enrollment 43,635 undergrad, 3,339 grad
Campus surroundings Urban, suburban
Sports teams Lions
Mascot Lion

York University (YorkU) is a large comprehensive university, located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In terms of physical size, it is Canada's largest university, and third-largest in terms of student population. York has almost 50,000 students and 7,000 staff and faculty spread over two campuses.

History

York University was founded in 1959, by virtue of the York Act, which received Royal Assent in the Ontario Legislature on March 26 of that year. Its first class was held on September 1960, in Falconer Hall on the University of Toronto campus, with a total of 76 students. In the fall of 1961, York moved to the Glendon campus, and began to emphasize liberal arts and part-time adult education.

In 1965, York moved into its permanent home on the Keele campus. The campus, located at the northern edge of the City of Toronto, was regarded too desolate and isolated, in a generally industrialized part of the city. Some of the early architecture was unpopular with many. In the last two decades, the campus has been intensified with new buildings, including a dedicated student centre and new fine arts, computer science and business administration buildings, as well as a small shopping mall, hockey arena, and tennis stadium. As Toronto has spread further out, York has found itself in a relatively central location within the built-up Greater Toronto Area. Although its master plan envisions a denser on-campus environment commensurate with that location, the university's administration has made very limited efforts towards creating a centralized, urban feel. A controversial low-density, suburban-style housing development has served as a flashpoint for this tension.

Academics

File:Canada-toronto-york-university-01.jpg
View from Vari Hall

York University has ten faculties. Several of these overlap. The Faculties of Arts & Sciences, Liberal & Professional Studies (Atkinson), and Glendon College, for instance, each house separate mathematics departments. The Schulich School of Business, which figures in a number of prominent international MBA rankings, offers an unusual International Business Administration program which is the first of its kind in Canada, while the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies' School of Administrative Studies is the largest business undergraduate program in Canada. Other faculties are unique, such as the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, although it too has begun to overlap with aspects of the environmental sciences and engineering programs whose professorial staff are resident in the Faculty of Science & Engineering.

Steps have, however, been undertaken to begin to unify similar departments in separate faculties, and in some areas these overlaps have in fact contributed to York's efforts to brand itself as a university focused on interdisciplinarity. York University's Faculty of Graduate Studies is Ontario's second largest graduate school offering graduate degrees in a variety of disciplines. There are several joint graduate programs with the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. The university has also been traditionally strong in arts and social sciences: York's Faculty of Arts is the largest in Canada and the school has the greatest number of humanists and social scientists in Canada, and the political science department, a leading centre for the study of radical political economy, has been singled out in Maclean's annual ranking of universities. Its history department is especially strong in Canadian history. The School of Women's Studies at York University is one of the oldest of its kind and offers the largest array of courses in this field in the country, 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 was awarded to York University and Université de Montréal by the German Academic Exchange Service.

The Faculty of Fine Arts also enjoys an excellent reputation, offering programs such as ethnomusicology and a degree in cultural criticism referred to as "cultural studies"; York's joint Bachelor of Design program with Sheridan College is the first and largest such joint program in the province of Ontario. York's Faculty of Education (also known as the "Toronto School of Liberal Education") is distinguished by the unusual amount of teaching experience that students acquire. Osgoode Hall Law School is Canada's largest and among its oldest, having moved from a downtown location to the York campus in 1969 following the requirement that every law school affiliate with a university.

While engineering is new to York University, the school has long been involved in certain niche areas related to engineering within its Faculty of Science, now Faculty of Science & Engineering. Space projects are a particular strength, and York offers both a unique Space & Communication Sciences undergraduate degree and a pair of small telescopes on campus to help support it. York’s Centre for Vision Research, for example, 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 research to strengthen astronauts’ sense of ‘up’ and ‘down’ in zero-gravity environments; the room, a rare six-sided immersive environment in Canada, is 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 has five libraries containing over six-and-a-half million items including more than 2.5 million books and subscriptions to over 13,000 electronic journals. The Osgoode Hall Law School houses the largest law library in the Commonwealth of Nations.

York's approximately 1,200 full-time professors and academic librarians are represented by the York University Faculty Association.

Athletics

The university is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the York Lions. The team was formerly known as the "York Yeomen" and "York Yeowomen", but the name was changed in 2003 to be more gender-neutral. However, the real reason, as widely rumoured, was that few students understood what "yeoman" meant, except for the many British history majors.

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).

There were plans to build a new football and soccer statium to host the Toronto Argonauts Canadian Football League team and future football tournaments, but a deal was signed by the Argos to remain at the Rogers Centre (formerly known as the SkyDome).

Campuses

Keele Campus, York's main 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 has a satellite campuse downtown, however; Schulich's is known as the Miles S. Nadal Management Centre, while Osgoode's is known as the Professional Development Centre and is located in the Dundas West Tower at Yonge and Dundas.

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 in mid-town 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.

Students

York is Canada's third-largest university, with almost 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 organizations; two student-run publications and three broadcast programs; two art galleries; 33 on-campus eateries; and a retail mall.

Colleges

York has 9 undergraduate residential colleges:

Faculties and Abbreviations

  • Arts & Sciences (AS)
  • Atkinson, Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies (AK)
  • Education (ED)
  • Environmental Studies (ES)
  • Fine Arts (FA)
  • Glendon College (GL)
  • Graduate Studies (GS)
  • Osgoode Hall Law School (OS)
  • Schulich School of Business (SB)
  • Science and Engineering (SC)

Seneca@York

York also shares the Keele Campus with Seneca College, Seneca@York, and offers a number of joint programs with Seneca College:

  • School of Communication Arts
  • Computer Studies
  • Biological Science and Applied Chemistry
  • Corporate and Technical Communications

Transit

York University is a classic commuter school. Over 85% of the students and 90% of the staff have home addresses in the GTA, and most of them commute by car or transit. Due to the high numbers of commuters leaving and entering the campus every day, traffic congestion, shortage of parking space and long bus lines result.

York University's Glendon and Keele campuses are served by Toronto Transit Commission, but the Keele site is also served by York Region Transit buses (both regular and Viva) from the immediate north, GO Transit express buses from several other Toronto suburbs and Greyhound buses for regional transportation. The department of Security, Parking and Transportation Services operates a shuttle service to GO Transit's York University train station on its Bradford corridor, as the station is not within walking distance. Close to fourteen hundred buses move people through the campus each day. A proposed extension of the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line beyond its current terminus would run directly under the campus, creating new stations at Keele and Finch (Finch West), at the centre of campus (York University), and at Steeles Avenue, interfacing with York Region Transit (Steeles West).

Bus Stops at Ian McDonald Blvd:

West Side

North End:

South End:

  • YRT 3 Thornhill-York University
  • YRT 10 York University-Woodbridge
  • YRT 20 Jane-Concord


East Side

Controversies

There is a long tradition of activist politics on campus, and that has resulted in vocal demonstrations, particularly concerning issues relating to the Middle East and economic globalization. There have been criticisms of both the activists, for disrupting classes and provoking confrontations with other students, and against the university administration for its response to demonstrators and activists, including expulsion and alleged police misconduct against activists.

As well, a recent (2005) controversy arose regarding the sale of university land for a housing development. The land was sold for C$15.8 million to a developer, Tribute Communities, which has close ties with the university administration. Tribute Communities allegedly did not pay the full market price for the land. York University maintained that the proposal, mostly consisting of townhouses, was the best overall concept. A retired judge, Edward Saunders, cleared York University.

In October 2005, Professor David Noble, in opposition to York's practice of cancelling classes on the Jewish High Holidays, which originated in 1974 in deference to the university's large Jewish enrolment, applied to the university's senate body for review of the policy. On the York senate's affirmation of the policy, he pledged that he would teach on those days anyway, but later said that he would instead poll students in his courses to see if they want him to cancel future classes out of respect for any religious holiday they may observe. He argued: "Look, I have very diverse classes and I want to dramatize the point that we are a multicultural, publicly funded university, so we should either recognize all religious high holidays or none." Noble, himself of Jewish ancestry, believes a secular institution should not cancel classes for religious holidays.

Former Presidents

  • Murray G Ross 1959-1970
  • David Slater 1970-1973
  • H. Ian Macdonald 1973-1984
  • Harry W. Arthurs 1985-1992
  • Susan Mann 1993-1997

Most Famous Chancellor

Noted alumni

Noted faculty


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