In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle, has become one of Canada’s leading comprehensive universities with 28,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs.

For 18 years in a row, UW has been named Canada’s most innovative university in the Maclean’s annual university rankings. This year Waterloo also topped the reputational categories of Most Innovative, most likely to produce the Leaders of Tomorrow, and Best Overall.

In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow.

Waterloo, as home to the world’s largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research, and discovery.

What’s new

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is the site of a new UW satellite campus offering programs in chemical and civil engineering starting in 2009; programs in information technology management and finance and risk management will start in 2010.

The Balsillie School of International Affairs, founded in 2007, is a collaborative initiative of the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, with the support and involvement of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Construction of the school’s new building in uptown Waterloo is expected to begin in 2009.

The School of Pharmacy (left) opened in 2008, anchoring a new Kitchener health sciences campus that will include a facility for McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Students began classes in the new building in 2009.

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What sets us apart

UW is enterprising and practical

• world’s largest post-secondary co-operative education program
• “creator owns it” intellectual property policy helps move ideas into the economy
• R&T Park transfers technology and ideas to the marketplace
• Accelerator Centre helps business start-ups grow

World leaders

• world-renowned computer science and engineering programs
• world’s most advanced quantum computing device
• Bill Gates (right) names UW a top source of Microsoft’s student and grad hires
• leader in water quality research, home to the Canadian Water Network

Creative and risk-taking

• world’s first and largest faculty of mathematics
• world’s first department of kinesiology
• Canada’s first co-op school of pharmacy
• Canada’s first stand-alone undergraduate nanotechnology engineering program
• Canada’s first environment faculty
• unique Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology program

Innovative and relevant

• created software to put the Oxford English Dictionary online
• WATFOR compiler let scientists fully exploit computational power
• first multi-point theatre performance
• Engineers Without Borders, founded by UW grads, helps build prosperous communities in developing nations
• Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing brings math excitement to school kids worldwide