© Dalhousie University
Motto: ora et labora (Latin: "Pray and work")
Founded	1818
School type	Public
President	Tom Traves
Location	Halifax, Nova Scotia
Enrollment	8,900 Undergraduates. 2,900 Graduates
Campus surroundings	Urban
Sports teams	Tigers

Dalhousie University is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The university has traditionally been one of Canada's leading universities although its standards of education have slipped somewhat relative to other Canadian schools in the 1990s and early 21st century partially due to government funding cuts. Nonetheless, Dalhousie is still well respected and offers a wide array of programs, including a medical and law school. The chancellor is Dr. Richard Goldbloom with Dr. Tom Traves serving as president and vice-chancellor.

Contents

1 History 2 Faculties 3 Current Issues 4 Trivia 5 External links

History

Dalhousie College was founded in 1818 by George Ramsay who, as the Ninth Earl of Dalhousie and Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, established Dalhousie as a college open to all people regardless of class or creed. At the laying of the cornerstone on May 22, 1820, Lord Dalhousie said that this University was "founded on the principles of religious tolerance." The College did not, however, have a student population until about 1860.

Dalhousie was distinctive as an urban institution. This status was seen not only, in the early days at least, in the use of much of the college's lowest floor as vault space for Oland's Brewery, but also in the consistent drawing of about one-third of the student body from the Halifax-Dartmouth urban area and in the college's ability to draw upon local professional populations in the establishment of faculties of medicine and law. Finances remained difficult into the 1880s, but by the end of that decade the accumulated donations of the wealthy alumnus George Munro had provided the stimulus that led to growth in student numbers and the emergence of Dalhousie as a centre of scholarship acknowledged throughout the dominion.

In 1920 the University of King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, English Canada's oldest degree granting institution, burned down. Through a grant from the Carnegie foundation, King's College was able to relocate to Halifax and entered into a partnersip with Dalhousie University. It shares Dalhousie's Arts and Sciences Faculty, and offers several interdisciplinary humanities degree programmes, such as Contemporary Studies and Early Modern Studies.

The Technical University of Nova Scotia was merged with Dalhousie University as the engineering faculty and renamed DalTech in 1997; since 2000 it has been known as the Sexton Campus.

Faculties

Dalhousie comprises eleven faculties:

• Architecture and Planning
• Arts and Social Sciences
• Computer Science
• Dentistry
• Engineering
• Graduate Studies
• Health Professions
• Law
• Management
• Medicine
• Science

Current Issues

In 2003 there were 8,900 undergraduate students and 2,900 graduate students enrolled at the university. The university is facing serious financial problems in the early 21st century, forcing it to rapidly raise tuition fees. Even with the increased tuition fees Dalhousie is facing some financial problems such as being able to pay for more than $100 million (Canadian) in deferred maintenance. In 2002 there was a month long strike by the professors at the university demanding, among other things, that retiring professors be replaced by an equivalent new professor in hopes of maintaining the level of full professors at the university; the number of full-time professors had been declining for some years. The professors' demands on this issue were met.

The university is going through a building phase. A new building for the Faculty of Computer Science opened in October 1999 followed shortly thereafter by the Marion McCain Arts and Social Sciences Building . The Howe Hall residence was expanded with the addition of Fountain House and a new residence/daycare was also built, named Risley Hall. The Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building scheduled to open in September 2005.

Trivia

• The current campus was designed by Andrew R. Cobb.
• The school's athletic teams are called the Tigers.

External links

• Dalhousie University http://www.dal.ca/
• Dalhousie University Faculty of Computer Science http://www.cs.dal.ca/
• Webcam views of Dalhousie http://www.cs.dal.ca/cam/
• Review of The Lives of Dalhousie University http://www.utpjournals.com/product/chr/764/lives7.html
• The Earls of Dalhousie http://www.dalhousielodge.org/earls.htm

See also Dalhousie Students Union