McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language
public research university located in
Montreal, Quebec,
Canada. Founded in 1821 by
royal charter granted by
King George IV,
[Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, 1801–1895.'' McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980. ] the university bears the name of
James McGill, a Scottish merchant whose
bequest in 1813 formed the university's precursor, University of McGill College (or simply, McGill College); the name was officially changed to McGill University in 1885.
McGill's main campus is on the slope of
Mount Royal in
downtown Montreal
Downtown Montreal ( French: ''Centre-Ville de Montréal'') is the central business district of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The district is situated on the southernmost slope of Mount Royal, and occupies the western portion of the borough of Vil ...
in the borough of
Ville-Marie, with a
second campus situated in
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue () is an on-island suburb located at the western tip of the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is the second oldest community in Montreal's West Island, having been founded as a parish in 1703. The ol ...
, west of the main campus on Montreal Island. The university is one of two members of the
Association of American Universities located outside the United States, alongside the
University of Toronto, and is the only Canadian member of the
Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) within the
World Economic Forum.
McGill offers degrees and diplomas in over 300 fields of study, with the highest average entering grades of any Canadian university. Most students are enrolled in the six largest faculties, namely
Arts,
Science,
Medicine,
Education,
Engineering, and
Management.
McGill is the most internationally diverse of any medical-doctoral research university in Canada, with international students comprising over 30% of its student population and hailing from more than 150 countries. Additionally, over 41% of students are born outside of Canada. McGill is ranked among the world's top universities by major educational publications,
and has held the top position in the country for the past 18 years in the annual ''
Maclean's''
Canadian university rankings.
McGill counts among its alumni and faculty 12
Nobel laureates
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...
and 147
Rhodes Scholars
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
,
both the most of any university in Canada,
as well as 159
Loran Scholars, 18 billionaires, the
current prime minister and two former
prime ministers of Canada, two
Governors General of Canada, 15 justices of the
Supreme Court of Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; french: Cour suprême du Canada, CSC) is the Supreme court, highest court in the Court system of Canada, judicial system of Canada. It comprises List of Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, nine justices, wh ...
, at least eight
foreign leaders, and more than 100 members of
national legislatures. McGill alumni also include 8
Academy Award winners, 13
Grammy Award winners, at least 13
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
winners, four
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
winners, and 121
Olympians with over 35
Olympic medals.
The inventors of the game of
basketball,
modern organized
ice hockey,
and the pioneers of
,
[Watkins, Robert ]
"A History of Canadian University Football"
"CISfootball.org", May 2006. as well as the founders of several major universities and colleges are also graduates of the university.
Notable researchers include
Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the
atomic nucleus and conducted his Nobel Prize–winning research on the nature of
radioactivity while working as Professor of Experimental Physics at the university.
Other notable inventions by McGillians include the world's first
artificial cell,
web search engine, and
charge-coupled device, among others.
McGill has the largest
endowment per student with regard to financial endowments of over C$1 billion in Canada.
In 2019, it was the recipient of the largest single philanthropic gift in Canadian history, a $200 million donation to fund the creation of the
McCall MacBain Scholarships programme.
History
Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning
The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning (RIAL) was created in 1801 under an Act of the
Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada (41 George III Chapter 17), ''An Act for the establishment of Free Schools and the Advancement of Learning in this Province''. The RIAL was initially authorized to operate two new Royal Grammar Schools, in Quebec City and in Montreal. This was a turning point for public education in Lower Canada as the schools were created by legislation, which showed the government's willingness to support the costs of education and even the salary of a schoolmaster. This was an important first step in the creation of non-denominational schools. When James McGill died in 1813, his bequest was administered by the RIAL.
In 1846 the Royal Grammar School in Quebec City closed, and the one in Montreal merged with the
High School of Montreal. By the mid-19th century, the RIAL had lost control of the other eighty-two
grammar schools it had administered. However, in 1853 it took over the High School of Montreal from the school's board of directors and continued to operate it until 1870. Thereafter, its sole remaining purpose was to administer the McGill bequest on behalf of the private college. The RIAL continues to exist today; it is the
corporate identity that runs the university and its various constituent bodies, including the former Macdonald College (now Macdonald Campus), the
Montreal Neurological Institute, and the Royal Victoria College (the former women's college turned residence). Since the revised Royal Charter of 1852, The trustees of the RIAL are the board of governors of McGill University.
[Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, 1801–1895.'' McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980. ]
McGill College
James McGill, born in
Glasgow, Scotland on October 6, 1744, was a successful merchant in Quebec, having matriculated into the
University of Glasgow in 1756. Soon afterwards, McGill left for North America to explore the business opportunities there, especially in the fur trade. Between 1811 and 1813, he drew up a will leaving his "Burnside estate", a tract of rural land and 10,000
pounds to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning.
On McGill's death in December 1813, the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, established in 1801 by an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, added the establishing of a university pursuant to the conditions of McGill's will to its original function of administering
elementary education in
Lower Canada.
As a condition of the bequest, the land and funds had to be used for the establishment of a "University or College, for the purposes of Education and the Advancement of Learning in the said Province."
[ The will specified a private, constituent college] bearing his name would have to be established within ten years of his death; otherwise, the bequest would revert to the heirs of his wife.
On March 31, 1821, after protracted legal battles with the Desrivières family (the heirs of his wife), McGill College received a royal charter from King George IV. The charter provided the college should be deemed and taken as a university, with the power of conferring degrees. The third Lord Bishop of Quebec, The Right Reverend Dr. George Mountain, (DCL
DCL or may refer to:
* 650 in Roman numerals, see 650 (disambiguation)
Computers
* Data Center Linux, see Open Source Development Labs
* Data Control Language, a subset of SQL
* Dialog Control Language, a language and interpreter within AutoC ...
, Oxford) was appointed the first principal of McGill College and a professor of divinity. He is also responsible for the creation of Bishop's University in 1843 and Bishop's College School in 1836 in the Eastern Townships
The Eastern Townships (french: Cantons de l'Est) is an historical administrative region in southeastern Quebec, Canada. It lies between the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the American border, and extends from Granby in the southwest, to Drummondv ...
.
University development
Campus expansions
Although McGill College received its Royal Charter in 1821, it was inactive until 1829 when the Montreal Medical Institution, which had been founded in 1823, became the college's first academic unit and Canada's first medical school. The Faculty of Medicine granted its first degree, a Doctorate of Medicine and Surgery, in 1833; this was also the first medical degree to be awarded in Canada.
The Faculty of Medicine
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
remained the school's only functioning faculty until 1843 when the Faculty of Arts commenced teaching in the newly constructed Arts Building
The McCall MacBain Arts Building (also known as the Arts Building, formerly the McGill College Building) is a landmark building located at 853 Sherbrooke Street West, in the centre of the McGill University downtown campus in Montreal, Quebec. The ...
and East Wing (Dawson Hall). The university also historically has strong links with the Canadian Grenadier Guards, a military regiment in which James McGill served as Lieutenant-Colonel. This title is marked upon the stone that stands before the Arts building, from where the Guards step off annually to commemorate Remembrance Day.
The Faculty of Law
A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...
was founded in 1848 and is also the oldest of its kind in the nation. In 1896, the McGill School of Architecture was the second architecture school to be established in Canada, six years after the University of Toronto in 1890.
Sir John William Dawson
Sir John William Dawson (1820–1899) was a Canadian geologist and university administrator.
Life and work
John William Dawson was born on 13 October 1820 in Pictou, Nova Scotia, where he attended and graduated from Pictou Academy. Of Scott ...
, McGill's principal from 1855 to 1893, is often credited with transforming the school into a modern university. He recruited the aid of Montreal's wealthiest citizens (eighty percent of Canada's wealth was then controlled by families who lived within the Golden Square Mile area that surrounded the university), many of whom donated property and funding needed to construct the campus buildings. Their names adorn many of the campus's prominent buildings.
William Spier designed the addition of the West Wing of the Arts Building for William Molson, 1861. Alexander Francis Dunlop
Alexander Francis Dunlop (August 4, 1842 – April 30, 1923), was a Canadian architect from Montreal, Quebec.
Biography
Dunlop worked as an apprentice to Montreal architects George Browne and John James Browne. From 1871 to 1874 he lived an ...
designed major alterations to the East Wing of McGill College (now called the Arts Building, McGill University) for Prof. Bovey and the Science Dept., 1888. This expansion of the campus continued until 1920. Buildings designed by Andrew Taylor Andrew or Andy Taylor may refer to:
Sport
* Andrew Taylor (footballer, born 1986), English footballer
* Andy Taylor (footballer, born 1986), English footballer
* Andy Taylor (footballer, born 1988), English footballer
* Andrew Taylor (Australian ...
include the Redpath Museum (1880), Macdonald Physics Building (1893), the Redpath Library (1893), the Macdonald Chemistry Building (1896)—now known as the Macdonald-Harrington Building, the Macdonald Engineering Building (1907)—now known as the Macdonald-Stewart Library Building, and the Strathcona Medical Building (1907)—since renamed the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building.
In 1899, the university established the McLennan Travelling Library - through this project, boxes of about thirty varied books were shipped all over Canada to places without libraries. The books were passed from home to home until most people had read all they had wanted to, then they were shipped back to be replaced by a new selection.
''McGill University Waltz'' composed by Frances C. Robinson, was published in Montréal by W.H. Scroggie, c 1904.
Initially, the institution was called McGill College or University of McGill College, but in 1885, the university's Board of Governors formally adopted the use of the name ‘McGill University’. In 1905, the university acquired a second campus when Sir William C. Macdonald, one of the university's major benefactors, endowed a college in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, west of Montreal. Macdonald College, now known as the Macdonald Campus, opened to students in 1907, originally offering programs in agriculture, household science, and teaching.
Also the same year in 1905, the Bishop's University Medical Faculty Montreal who established in Montreal in 1871, closed and amalgamated with McGill University to create the new McGill University Faculty of Medicine, where BU graduates such as Maude Abbott, one of Canada's earliest female medical graduates transferred to work for McGill as the Curator of the McGill Medical Museum.
George Allan Ross designed the Pathology Building, 1922–23; the Neurological Institute, 1933; Neurological Institute addition 1938 at McGill University. Jean Julien Perrault (architect) designed the McTavish Street
McTavish Street (officially in french: Rue McTavish) is a street in the Golden Square Mile of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is named for Simon McTavish, whose estate once covered the land about it. The street runs up the slope of Mount Royal, fr ...
residence for Charles E. Gravel, which is now called David Thompson House (1934).
Women's education
Women's education at McGill began in 1884 when Donald Smith (later the Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), began funding separate lectures for women, given by university staff members. The first degrees granted to women at McGill were conferred in 1888. In 1899, the Royal Victoria College (RVC) opened as a residential college for women at McGill with Hilda D. Oakeley
Hilda Diana Oakeley (12 October 1867 – 7 October 1950) was a British philosopher, educationalist and author.
Life and career
Hilda Oakeley was born in 1867 in Durham, UK. She was from a privileged upper-middle-class background. Her father, S ...
as the head. Until the 1970s, all female undergraduate students, known as "Donaldas," were considered to be members of RVC. Beginning in the autumn of 2010, the newer Tower section of Royal Victoria College became a mixed gender dormitory, whereas the older West Wing remains strictly for women. Both the Tower and the West Wing of Royal Victoria College form part of the university's residence system.
McGill in the Great War
McGill University played a significant role in The Great War. Many students and alumni enlisted in the first wave of patriotic fervour that swept the nation in 1914, but in the spring of 1915—after the first wave of heavy Canadian casualties at Ypres—Hamilton Gault, the founder of the Canadian regiment and a wealthy Montreal businessman, was faced with a desperate shortage of troops. When he reached out to his friends at home for support, over two hundred were commissioned from the ranks, and many more would serve as soldiers throughout the war. On their return to Canada after the war, Major George McDonald and Major George Currie George Currie may refer to:
* George Currie (Northern Irish politician) (1905–1978), Northern Irish barrister and politician
* George Currie (musician) (born 1950), Scottish musician and amateur archaeologist
* George Currie (academic) (1896–19 ...
formed the accounting firm McDonald Currie, which later became one of the founders of Price Waterhouse Coopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four account ...
. Captain Percival Molson was killed in action in July 1917. Percival Molson Memorial Stadium
Percival Molson Memorial Stadium (also known in French as ''Stade Percival-Molson''; commonly referred to as Molson Stadium in English or Stade Molson in French) is an outdoor football stadium in Downtown Montreal, on the slopes of Mount Royal, ...
at McGill is named in his honour.
The War Memorial Hall (more generally known as Memorial Hall) is a landmark building on the campus of McGill University. At the dedication ceremony, the Governor General of Canada ( Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis) laid the cornerstone. Dedicated on October 6, 1946, the Memorial Hall and adjoining Memorial Pool honour students who had enlisted and died in the First World War, and in the Second World War. In Memorial Hall, there are two Stained Glass Regimental badges, World War I and World War II Memorial Windows by Charles William Kelsey c. 1950/1.
A war memorial window (1950) by Charles William Kelsey in the McGill War Memorial Hall depicts the figure of St. Michael and the badges of the Navy, Army and the Air Force.
A Great War memorial window featuring Saint George and a slain dragon at the entrance to the Blackader-Lauterman Library of Architecture and Art is dedicated to the memory of 23 members of the McGill chapter of Delta Upsilon who gave their lives in the Great War.
Six other windows (1951) by Charles William Kelsey on the west wall of the memorial hall depict the coats of arms of the regiments in which the McGill alumni were members.
There is a memorial archway at Macdonald Campus, two additional floors added to the existing Sir Arthur Currie gymnasium, a hockey rink and funding for an annual Memorial Assembly. A Book of Remembrance on a marble table contains the names of those lost in both World Wars. On November 11, 2012, the McGill Remembers website launched; the University War Records Office collected documents between 1940 and 1946 related to McGill students, staff and faculty in the Second World War.
Quotas on Jewish students
Beginning in the 1920s and continuing until the 1960s, McGill imposed a controversial quota which specified a maximum on the proportion of the newly admitted Jewish students. The quota limited the Jewish student population in medicine and law to at most 10%.
Founder of universities and colleges
McGill was instrumental in founding several major universities and colleges. It established the first post-secondary institutions in British Columbia to provide degree programs to the growing cities of Vancouver and Victoria. It chartered Victoria College in 1903 as an affiliated junior college of McGill, offering first and second-year courses in arts and science, until it became today's University of Victoria. British Columbia's first university was incorporated in Vancouver in 1908 as the McGill University College of British Columbia. The private institution granted McGill degrees until it became the independent University of British Columbia in 1915.
Dawson College began in 1945 as a satellite campus of McGill to absorb the anticipated influx of students after World War II. Many students in their first three years in the Faculty of Engineering took courses at Dawson College to relieve the McGill campus for the later two years for their degree course. Dawson eventually became independent of McGill and evolved into the first English CEGEP in Quebec. Another CEGEP, John Abbott College, was established in 1971 at the campus of McGill's Macdonald College.
Both founders of the University of Alberta, Premier Alexander Cameron Rutherford of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, were also McGill alumni. In addition, McGill alumni and professors, Sir William Osler and Howard Atwood Kelly, were among the four founders and early faculty members of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Osler eventually became the first Physician-in-Chief of the new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...
, Maryland, US in 1889. He led the creation of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893. Other McGill alumni founded the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in the 1880s.
Campus
Downtown campus
McGill's main campus is situated in downtown Montreal
Downtown Montreal ( French: ''Centre-Ville de Montréal'') is the central business district of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The district is situated on the southernmost slope of Mount Royal, and occupies the western portion of the borough of Vil ...
at the foot of Mount Royal. Most of its buildings are in a park-like campus (also known as the Lower Campus) north of Sherbrooke Street and south of Pine Avenue between Peel
Peel or Peeling may refer to:
Places Australia
* Peel (Western Australia)
* Peel Island, Queensland
*Peel, New South Wales
* Peel River (New South Wales)
Canada
* Peel Parish, New Brunswick
* Peel, New Brunswick, an unincorporated communi ...
and Aylmer streets. The campus also extends west of Peel Street (also known as Upper Campus) for several blocks, starting north of Doctor Penfield; the campus also extends east of University Street, starting north of Pine Avenue, an area that includes McGill's Percival Molson Memorial Stadium
Percival Molson Memorial Stadium (also known in French as ''Stade Percival-Molson''; commonly referred to as Molson Stadium in English or Stade Molson in French) is an outdoor football stadium in Downtown Montreal, on the slopes of Mount Royal, ...
and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. The community immediately east of University Street and south of Pine Avenue is known as Milton-Park, where a large number of students reside. The campus is near the Peel
Peel or Peeling may refer to:
Places Australia
* Peel (Western Australia)
* Peel Island, Queensland
*Peel, New South Wales
* Peel River (New South Wales)
Canada
* Peel Parish, New Brunswick
* Peel, New Brunswick, an unincorporated communi ...
and McGill Metro stations. A major downtown boulevard, McGill College Avenue, leads up to the Roddick Gates, the university's formal entrance. Many of the major university buildings were constructed using local grey limestone, which serves as a unifying element. A number of these buildings are connected by indoor tunnels.
The university's first classes were held in at Burnside Place, James McGill's country home. Burnside Place remained the sole educational facility until the 1840s, when the school began construction on its first buildings: the central and east wings of the Arts Building. The rest of the campus was essentially a cow pasture, a situation similar to the few other Canadian universities and early American colleges of the age.
The university's athletic facilities, including Molson Stadium, are on Mount Royal, near the residence halls and the Montreal Neurological Institute. The Gymnasium is named in honour of General Sir Arthur William Currie
General Sir Arthur William Currie, (5 December 187530 November 1933) was a senior officer of the Canadian Army who fought during World War I. He had the unique distinction of starting his military career on the very bottom rung as a pre-war ...
.
In 2012, ''Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure Co. (formerly Wyndham Destinations, Inc. and Wyndham Worldwide Corporation) is an American timeshare company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. It develops, sells, and manages timeshare properties under several vacation ownershi ...
'' rated McGill's campus as one of the 17 most beautiful university campuses in the world.
Residence system
McGill's residence system comprises 16 properties providing dormitories, apartments, and hotel-style housing to approximately 3,100 undergraduate students and some graduate students from the downtown and Macdonald campuses. With the exception of students returning as " floor fellows," few McGill students live in residence (known colloquially as "rez") after their first year of undergraduate study, even if they are not from the Montreal area. Most second-year students transition to off-campus apartment housing. Many students settle in the Milton-Park neighbourhood, sometimes called the "McGill Ghetto," which is the neighbourhood directly to the east of the downtown campus. Students have also moved to areas such as Mile End, The Plateau, and even as far as Verdun because of rising rent prices.
Many first-year students live in the Upper Residence ("Upper Rez"), which consists of the 1960s-style dormitories McConnell Hall, Molson Hall, and Gardner Hall and are located on the slope of Mount Royal alongside historic Douglas Hall, another student residence.
Royal Victoria College opened as a residential college for women in 1899, but its Tower section became mixed gender in September 2010 while its West Wing remains strictly for women. The college's original building was designed by Bruce Price and its extension was designed by Percy Erskine Nobbs and George Taylor Hyde. A statue of Queen Victoria by her daughter Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll stands in front of the building.
Macdonald campus
A second campus, the Macdonald Campus, in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue () is an on-island suburb located at the western tip of the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is the second oldest community in Montreal's West Island, having been founded as a parish in 1703. The ol ...
houses the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Science, the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, the Institute of Parasitology, and the McGill School of Environment. As of fall 2020, despite a decrease in enrollment from the previous year's 1,962 students, the campus has a total of 1,892 actively enrolled students, including those studying part-time and full-time, across all available programs. Of the total, 1,212 students are pursuing an undergraduate degree, 374 are pursuing a Masters-level degree, and 248 are pursuing a Doctoral-level degree, respectively. The gender percentage is 70.7% female and 29.3% male. There is a high international student presence, where over 1 in 5 students studying are from outside Canada. Students attending Macdonald campus often nickname the campus as “Mac” campus. Its location near the St. Lawrence river makes the campus significantly quieter and nature dense than the Downtown Montreal campus. The Morgan Arboretum and the J. S. Marshall Radar Observatory
The J.S. Marshall Radar Observatory (or MRO) is a McGill University facility in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada housing several weather radars and other meteorological sensors, many of them running around the clock. It is one of the compon ...
are nearby.
The Morgan Arboretum
An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, man ...
was created in 1945. It is a forested reserve with the aim of 'teaching, and public education'. Its mandated goals are to continue research related to maintaining the health of the Arboretum plantations and woodlands, to develop new programs related to selecting species adapted to developing environmental conditions and to develop silvicultural practices that preserve and enhance biological diversity in both natural stands and plantations.
Outaouais campus
In 2019, McGill announced the construction of a new campus for its Faculty of Medicine in Gatineau
Gatineau ( ; ) is a city in western Quebec, Canada. It is located on the northern bank of the Ottawa River, immediately across from Ottawa, Ontario. Gatineau is the largest city in the Outaouais administrative region and is part of Canada's N ...
, Quebec, which will allow students from the Outaouais region to complete their undergraduate medical education locally and in French. Medical students began using the new facility in August 2020. The new facility is located above the emergency room at Gatineau Hospital, part of the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de l'Outaouais, in addition to new offices for the associated Family Medicine Unit for residency training. Although the preparatory year for students entering the undergraduate medical education program from CEGEP was initially planned to be offered solely at the McGill downtown campus in Montreal, collaboration with the Université du Québec en Outaouais made it possible to offer the program entirely in Gatineau.
McGill University Health Centre redevelopment plan
In 2006, the Quebec government initiated a $1.6 billion LEED
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a
green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction ...
redevelopment project for the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). The project will expand facilities to two separate campuses and consolidate the various hospitals of the MUHC on the site of an old CP rail yard adjacent to the Vendôme Metro station. This site, known as Glen Yards, comprises and spans portions of Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood and the city of Westmount.
The Glen Yards project has been controversial due to local opposition to the project, environmental issues, and the project's cost. The project, which has received approval from the provincial government, was, in 2003, expected to be complete by 2010. The new 'campus' has now been completed, and a massive effort of moving units from older hospitals, such Royal Victoria, Montreal Children's, and Montreal General, into the new McGill University Health Centre is underway.
Sustainability
In 2007, McGill premiered its Office of Sustainability and added a second full-time position in this area, the Director of Sustainability in addition to the Sustainability Officer. Recent efforts in implementing its sustainable development plan include the new Life Sciences Centre which was built with LEED-Silver certification and a green roof, as well as an increase in parking rates in January 2008 to fund other sustainability projects. Other student projects include The Flat: Bike Collective, which promotes alternative transportation, and the Farmer's Market, which occurs during the fall harvest.
McGill Community for Lifelong Learning
Founded in 1989, the McGill Community for Lifelong Learning (MCLL) is an educational community for senior learners housed in the McGill School of Continuing Studies. The program was founded by Fiona Clark, then-assistant director of continuing studies at McGill, and drew inspiration from horizontal peer-led programs, including the Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
Institute for Learning in Retirement. Its innovative educational model is notably different from an instructor-led approach, and instead sees seniors exploring educational interest as either study group moderators, or participants. A core team of volunteer seniors assists with all aspects of the organization's mandate with the support of McGill staff and facilities. The program brings together hundreds of senior members yearly and has acted as a springboard for numerous senior-led initiatives such as social events, educational symposiums, and cultural festivals, including an internationally recognized yearly Bloomsday event on the life and work of author James Joyce.
Other facilities
McGill's Bellairs Research Institute, in Saint James, Barbados
The parish of Saint James ("St. James") is an area located in the western central part of the country of Barbados. Increasingly St. James is becoming known as the playground of the rich and famous, and as a haven for sun-starved tourists with its ...
, is Canada's only teaching and research facility in the tropics. The institute has been in use for over 50 years. The university also operates the McGill Arctic Research Station on Axel Heiberg Island
Axel Heiberg Island ( iu, ᐅᒥᖕᒪᑦ ᓄᓈᑦ, ) is an uninhabited island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. Located in the Arctic Ocean, it is the 32nd largest island in the world and Canada's seventh largest island. According ...
, Nunavut
Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...
, and a Subarctic Research Station in Schefferville, Quebec.
McGill's Gault Nature Reserve () spans over of forest land, the largest remaining remnant of the primeval forests of the St. Lawrence River Valley
The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connecting ...
. The first scientific studies at the site occurred in 1859. The site has been the site of extensive research activities: "Today there are over 400 scientific articles, 100 graduate theses, more than 50 government reports and about 30 book chapters based on research at Mont St. Hilaire."
In addition to the McGill University Health Centre, McGill has been directly partnered with many teaching hospitals for decades and has a history of collaborating with many hospitals in Montreal. These cooperations allow the university to graduate over 1,000 students in health care
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
each year. McGill's contract-affiliated teaching hospitals include the Montreal Children's Hospital, the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Neurological Hospital, the Montreal Chest Institute
Montreal Chest Institute is a health centre in Montreal specializing in respiratory medicine. It is affiliated with the Royal Victoria Hospital, and by extension, McGill University Health Centre
The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC; french: ...
and the Royal Victoria Hospital which are all now part of the McGill University Health Centre. Other hospitals health care students may use include the Jewish General Hospital, the Douglas Hospital
The Douglas Mental Health University Institute (french: Institut universitaire en santé mentale Douglas; formerly the Douglas Hospital and originally the Protestant Hospital for the Insane) is a Canadian psychiatric hospital located in the boro ...
, St. Mary's Hospital Centre, Lachine Hospital, LaSalle Hospital, Lakeshore General Hospital, as well as health care facilities part of the Centre intégré de santé et services sociaux de l'Outaouais.
Until the late 19th century, McGill had also owned parkland atop the Westmount Summit, which was used as a botanical garden. In the early twentieth century, McGill donated the land to the City of Westmount
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
on the condition it become a bird sanctuary.
In 1998, the Faculty of Management launched their MBA Japan program, the first Canadian degree program offered in Japan, with teaching facilities at Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Administration and organization
Structure
The university's academic units are organized into 11 main Faculties and 13 Schools. These include the School of Architecture
This is a list of architecture schools at colleges and universities around the world.
An architecture school (also known as a school of architecture or college of architecture), is an institution specializing in architectural education.
Africa
...
, the School of Computer Science, the School of Information Studies, the School of Human Nutrition, the Bensadoun School of Retail Management, the Max Bell School of Public Policy, the School of Physical & Occupational Therapy, the Ingram School of Nursing, the School of Social Work, the School of Urban Planning, and the Bieler School of Environment. They also include the Institute of Islamic Studies (established in 1952), which offers graduate courses leading to the M.A. and PhD degrees, and covers the history, culture, and civilization of Islam; the institute is also served by one of the richest libraries in North America on Islamic studies.
The Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies[
] (GPS) oversees the admission and registration of graduate students (both master's and PhD). The GPS administers graduate fellowships, postdoctoral affairs, and the graduation process, including the examination of theses. In conjunction with other units, it conducts regular program reviews in all study disciplines.
Founded in 1956, the McGill Executive Institute
The McGill Executive Institute is the corporate education and management development unit of the McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It provides a variety of public business seminars as well as custom exe ...
provides business seminars and custom executive education to companies, government services and non-profit organizations. Led primarily by McGill faculty, the executive courses and management training programs are designed for all managerial levels, from board members to senior-level executives to junior managers.
University identity and culture
The McGill coat of arms is derived from an armorial device assumed during his lifetime by the founder of the University, James McGill. It was designed in 1906 by Percy Nobbs
Percy Erskine Nobbs (August 11, 1875 – November 5, 1964) was a Canadian architect who was born in Haddington, East Lothian, and trained in the United Kingdom. Educated at the Edinburgh Collegiate School and Edinburgh University, he spent ...
, three years into his term as director of the University's School of Architecture
This is a list of architecture schools at colleges and universities around the world.
An architecture school (also known as a school of architecture or college of architecture), is an institution specializing in architectural education.
Africa
...
. The University's patent of arms was subsequently granted by the Garter King at Arms
The Garter Principal King of Arms (also Garter King of Arms or simply Garter) is the senior King of Arms, and the senior Officer of Arms of the College of Arms, the heraldic authority with jurisdiction over England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Th ...
in 1922, registered in 1956 with Lord Lyon King of Arms in Edinburgh, and in 1992 with the Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges of Canada. In heraldic terms, the coat of arms is described as follows: "Argent three Martlets Gules, on a chief dancette of the second, an open book proper garnished or bearing the legend ''In Domino Confido'' in letters Sable between two crowns of the first. Motto: ''Grandescunt Aucta Labore''." The coat of arms consists of two parts, the shield and the scroll. The university publishes a guide to the use of the university's arms and motto.
The university's symbol is the martlet, stemming from the presence of the mythical bird on the official arms
Arms or ARMS may refer to:
*Arm or arms, the upper limbs of the body
Arm, Arms, or ARMS may also refer to:
People
* Ida A. T. Arms (1856–1931), American missionary-educator, temperance leader
Coat of arms or weapons
*Armaments or weapons
**Fi ...
of the university. The university's official colour is scarlet, which figures prominently in the academic dress of McGill University
The academic dress of McGill University describes the caps, gowns and hoods which are prescribed by the university for its degree candidates/holders. Until the mid-20th century, McGill also prescribed academic dress for its matriculating or enroll ...
. McGill's motto is ''Grandescunt Aucta Labore'', Latin for "By work, all things increase and grow" (literally, "Things grown great increase by work," that is, things that grow to be great do so by means of work). The official school song is entitled "Hail, Alma Mater."
Exchange and study abroad
McGill maintains ties with more than 160 partner universities where students can study abroad for either one or two semesters. Each year, McGill hosts around 500 incoming exchange students from over 32 countries. The university offers a multitude of activities and events to integrate the students into the university's community and introduce them to the North American academic culture. McGill is the home to more than 10,000 foreign students who make up of more than 27% of the student population.
Finances
The McGill endowment provides approximately 10 per cent of the school's annual operating revenues. McGill's endowment rests within the top 10 percent of all North American post-secondary institutions' endowments. The endowment is valued at over $1.8 billion, the second-largest in Canada and, at $41,323 per student, the largest among Canadian universities on a per-student basis.
McGill launched the ''Campaign McGill'' campaign in October 2007, with the goal of raising over $750 million for the purpose of further "attracting and retaining top talent in Quebec, to increase access to quality education and to further enhance McGill's ability to address critical global problems."["History in the Making"](_blank)
"McGill Public and Media Newsroom", October 18, 2007. Accessed May 4, 2008. The largest goal of any Canadian university fundraising campaign in history, the campaign was officially closed on June 18, 2013, having raised more than $1 billion.
McGill is also the recipient of a $200 million donation to fund the creation of the McCall MacBain Scholarships programme, the largest single philanthropic gift to a Canadian university before the $250 million James and Louise Temerty gift was announced in late 2020 for the University of Toronto.
Academics
Admissions
McGill University has a highly competitive acceptance rate of 38.1
and a graduate acceptance rate of 29.2%, with an enrolment rate of 19% of all applicants. , 22% of all students are enrolled in the McGill University Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Arts, McGill's largest academic unit. Of the other larger faculties, the Faculty of Science enrols 15%, the Faculty of Medicine
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
enrols 13%, the School of Continuing Studies enrols 12%, the Faculty of Engineering
Faculty may refer to:
* Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage)
* Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States)
* Faculty (instrument), an instrument or warra ...
and the Desautels Faculty of Management enrol about 10% each. The remainder of all students are enrolled in McGill's smaller schools, including the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry
A dental school (school of dental medicine, school of dentistry, dental college) is a tertiary educational institution—or part of such an institution—that teaches dental medicine to prospective dentists and potentially other dental auxiliaries ...
, Faculty of Medicine
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, M ...
, Faculty of Education
A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...
, Faculty of Law
A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...
, Schulich School of Music, and the Faculty of Religious Studies. Since the 1880s, McGill has been affiliated with three Theological Colleges
A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...
; the Montreal Diocesan Theological College (Anglican Church of Canada
The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC or ACoC) is the Ecclesiastical province#Anglican Communion, province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is ''l'Église anglicane du Canada''. In 2017, the Anglican Church co ...
), The Presbyterian College, Montreal (Presbyterian Church in Canada
The Presbyterian Church in Canada (french: Église presbytérienne du Canada) is a Presbyterian denomination, serving in Canada under this name since 1875. The United Church of Canada claimed the right to the name from 1925 to 1939. According to ...
), and United Theological College ( United Church of Canada). The university's Faculty of Religious Studies maintains additional affiliations with other theological institutions and organizations, such as the Montreal School of Theology.
Undergraduate
McGill undergraduates have the highest average entering grades of any Canadian university. Among admitted students, the median Quebec CEGEP R-score was 31.9, while the median grade 12 averages for students entering McGill from outside of Quebec ranged between 93.2% and 94.4% (A). For American students, the median SAT scores in the verbal, mathematics, and writing sections were 730, 730, and 730, respectively. The median ACT score was 32.
Law
Due to its bilingual nature, McGill's law school does not require applicants to sit the LSAT, which is only offered in English. For students who submitted LSAT scores in the September 2019 entering class, the median LSAT score was 163 (87.8th percentile) out of a possible 180 points. Of those students who entered with a bachelor's degree, the median GPA was 86% (3.8/4.0), and of those students entering from CEGEP, the average R-score was 34.29.
Medicine
For medical students in the 2020 entering class, of those students who entered with a bachelor's degree, the average GPA was 3.88 out of 4.0, and of those students entering from CEGEP, the average R-score was 37.10. McGill does not require applicants to its medical programme to sit the MCAT if they have an undergraduate degree from a Canadian university.
MBA
In the Desautels Faculty of Management's MBA program, applicants had an average GMAT score of 670 and an average GPA of 3.3. MBA students had an average age of 28, and five years of work experience. 95% of MBA students are bilingual and 60% are trilingual.
Teaching and learning
In the 2007–2008 school year, McGill offered over 340 academic programs in eleven faculties. The university also offers over 250 doctoral and master's graduate degree programs. Despite strong increases in university enrolment across North America, McGill has upheld a relatively low and appealing student-faculty ratio of 16:1. There are nearly 1,600 tenured or tenure-track professors teaching at the university.
Tuition fees vary significantly depending on the faculties that aspiring (graduate and undergraduate) students choose as well as their citizenship. For the undergraduate faculty of the arts, tuition fees vary for in- province, out-of-province, and international students, with full-time Quebec students paying around $4,333.10 per year, Canadian students from other provinces paying around $9,509.30 per year, and international students paying $22,102.57–$41,815.92 per year.
Since 1996, McGill, in accordance with the Quebec Ministry of Education, Recreation and Sports (Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport or MELS), has had eight categories that qualifies certain international students to be excused from paying international fees. These categories include: students from France and French-speaking Belgium
In Belgium, the French Community (french: Communauté française; ) refers to one of the three constituent constitutional linguistic communities. Since 2011, the French Community has used the name Wallonia-Brussels Federation (french: Féd ...
, a quota of students from select countries which have agreements with MELS, which include Algeria, China, and Morocco, students holding diplomatic status, including their dependents
A dependant is a person who relies on another as a primary source of income. A common-law spouse who is financially supported by their partner may also be included in this definition. In some jurisdictions, supporting a dependant may enabl ...
, and students enrolled in certain language programs leading to a degree in French.
In the 2008–2009 school year, McGill's graduate business program became funded by tuition. It was the last business school in Canada to do so.
For out-of-province first year undergraduate students, a high school average of 95% is required to receive a guaranteed one-year entrance scholarship.["Entrance awards"](_blank)
McGill University. Retrieved June 13, 2008. For renewal of previously earned scholarships, students generally need to be within the top 10% of their faculty. For in-course scholarships in particular, students must be within the top 5% of their faculty. McGill itself outlines scholarship considerations as follows: "Competition for basic and major scholarships is intense at McGill. An extraordinary number of exceptional applications are received each year and therefore we cannot award scholarships to all good candidates."
The university has joined Project Hero, a scholarship program cofounded by General (Ret'd) Rick Hillier for the families of fallen Canadian Forces members. McGill is also partnered with the STEM
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
initiative Schulich Leader Scholarships, awarding an $80,000 scholarship to an incoming engineering student and a $60,000 scholarship to a student pursuing a degree in science/technology/mathematics each year.["Schulich Leader Scholarships reward excellence, service"](_blank)
McGill University. Retrieved June 30, 2014.
Language policy
McGill is one of three English-language universities in Quebec; French is not a requirement to attend. The Faculty of Law does, however, require all students to be ' passively bilingual' since English or French may be used at any time. Over 40,000 students attend McGill, with international students accounting for approximately 29 percent of the student population. The majority of students are fluent in at least two languages. Francophone students, whether from Quebec or overseas, now make up approximately 20 percent of the student body.
Although the language of instruction is English, since its founding McGill has allowed students to write their thesis in French, and since 1964 students in all faculties have been able to submit any graded work in either English or French, provided the objective of the class is not to learn a particular language. The university has a bilingual language policy and charter.
In 1969, the nationalist ''McGill français'' movement demanded McGill become francophone, pro-nationalist, and pro-worker. The movement was led by Stanley Gray, a political science professor (and possibly unaware of government plans after the recent (1968) legislation founding the Université du Québec). A demonstration was held of 10,000 trade unionists, leftist activists, CEGEP students, and even some McGill students, at the university's Roddick Gates
The Roddick Gates, also known as the Roddick Memorial Gates, are monumental gates in Montreal that serve as the main entrance to the McGill University downtown campus. They are located on Sherbrooke Street West and are at the northern end of t ...
on March 28, 1969. Protesters saw English as the privileged language of commerce. McGill, where Francophone
French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...
s were only three percent of the students, could be seen as the force maintaining economic control by Anglophones of a predominantly French-speaking province. However, the majority of students and faculty opposed such a position.
Rankings and reputation
McGill ranked first in Canada among medical-doctoral universities in '' Maclean's'' Canadian University Rankings 2023. The university has held the top position in the ranking for 17 consecutive years. ''The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
''s Canadian University Report 2019 categorised McGill as "above average" for its financial aid, student experience and research, and as "average" for its library resources. Research Infosource ranked McGill second among Canadian universities with medical schools in its 2020 edition of Research Universities of the Year.
Internationally, McGill ranked 31st in the world and first in Canada in the 2023 QS World University Rankings. It also ranked 27th in the world and second in Canada in the 2020-21 CWUR World University Rankings. It was ranked 46th in the world and third in Canada by the 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2022, the Academic Ranking of World Universities
The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...
ranked the university 73rd in the world, and third in Canada. In the 2022–23 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Rankings, McGill was ranked 54th in the world and third in Canada.
In the Global University Employability Ranking 2022, published by Times Higher Education, McGill ranked 29th in the world and second in Canada. Nature ranked McGill 67th in the world and second in Canada among academic institutions for high-impact research in the 2021 edition of Nature Index. According to Wealth-X's 2019 ranking of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) alumni — those with US$30 million or more in net worth — McGill ranked 34th in the world and eighth outside the United States.
McGill's MBA program, offered by the Desautels Faculty of Management, has appeared in several rankings. Quacquarelli Symonds, in its Global MBA Rankings 2021, ranked McGill's MBA 59th in the world and second in Canada. The '' Financial Times'', in its 2020 Global MBA ranking, placed the MBA programme 91st in the world and second in Canada. In Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Best Business Schools ranking 2019–2020, Desautels was ranked seventh in Canada.
McGill is a member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), composed of the presidents of 29 of the world's top universities. It is the only Canadian university member of GULF. McGill is also one of only two non-American universities to be a member of the Association of American Universities, an organization of research-intensive universities.
Research
Research plays a critical role at McGill. McGill is affiliated with 12 Nobel Laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
s, and professors have won major teaching prizes. According to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, "researchers at McGill are affiliated with about 75 major research centres and networks, and are engaged in an extensive array of research partnerships with other universities, government and industry in Quebec and Canada, throughout North America and in dozens of other countries." In 2016, McGill had over $547 million of sponsored research income, the second-highest in Canada, and a research intensity per faculty of $317,600, the third highest among full-service universities in Canada. McGill has one of the largest patent portfolios among Canadian universities. McGill's researchers are supported by the McGill University Library, which comprises 13 branch libraries and holds over 11.5 million items.
Since 1926, McGill has been a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of leading research universities in North America. McGill is a founding member of Universitas 21, an international network of leading research-intensive universities that work together to expand their global reach and advance their plans for internationalization.
McGill is one of 26 members of the prestigious Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), which acts as an intellectual community within the World Economic Forum to advise its leadership on matters relating to higher education and research. It is the only Canadian university member of GULF. McGill is also a member of the U15, a group of prominent research universities within Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press began as McGill in 1963 and amalgamated with Queen's in 1969. McGill-Queen's University Press focuses on Canadian studies and publishes the Canadian Public Administration Series.
McGill is perhaps best recognized for its research and discoveries in the health sciences. Sir William Osler, Wilder Penfield, Donald Hebb, Donald Ewen Cameron, Brenda Milner, and others made significant discoveries in medicine, neuroscience and psychology while working at McGill, many at the university's Montreal Neurological Institute. The first hormone governing the Immune System (later christened the Cytokine 'Interleukin-2') was discovered at McGill in 1965 by Gordon & McLean.
The invention of the world's first artificial cell was made by Thomas Chang
Thomas may refer to:
People
* List of people with given name Thomas
* Thomas (name)
* Thomas (surname)
* Saint Thomas (disambiguation)
* Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church
* Thomas the Ap ...
while an undergraduate student at the university. While chair of physics at McGill, nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford performed the experiment that led to the discovery of the alpha particle and its function in radioactive decay, which won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. Alumnus Jack W. Szostak was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.
William Chalmers invented Plexiglas while a graduate student at McGill. In computing, MUSIC/SP, software for mainframes once popular among universities and colleges around the world, was developed at McGill. A team also contributed to the development of Archie
Archie is a masculine given name, a diminutive of Archibald. It may refer to:
People Given name or nickname
*Archie Alexander (1888–1958), African-American mathematician, engineer and governor of the US Virgin Islands
* Archie Blake (mathematici ...
, a pre- WWW search engine. A 3270 terminal emulator developed at McGill was commercialized and later sold to Hummingbird Software. A team has developed digital musical instruments in the form of prosthesis, called Musical Prostheses
Musical is the adjective of music.
Musical may also refer to:
* Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance
* Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the narr ...
.
Since 2017, McGill has partnered with the Université de Montréal on Mila (research institute), a community of professors, students, industrial partners and startups working in AI, with over 500 researchers making the institute the world's largest academic research centre in deep learning.
Libraries, archives and museums
The McGill University Library comprises 12 branch libraries containing 11.5 million items in its collection. Its branches include the Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, which holds about 350,000 items, including books, manuscripts, maps, prints, and a general rare book collection. The Islamic Studies Library
The holdings of the Islamic Studies Library, a branch of the McGill University Library, stand together with those of the Robarts Library of the University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research unive ...
contains over 125,000 volumes and a growing number of electronic resources covering the whole of Islamic civilization, including approximately 3,000 rare books and manuscripts. The Osler Library of the History of Medicine
The Osler Library, a branch of the McGill University Library and part of ROAAr since 2016, is Canada's foremost scholarly resource for the history of medicine, and one of the most important libraries of its type in North America. It is located i ...
is the largest medical history library in Canada and one of the most comprehensive in the world.
The McGill University Archives – now administered as part of the McGill Library – houses official records of, or relating to, people and activities connected to McGill University. The collection consists of manuscripts, texts, photographs, audio-visual material, architectural records, cartographic materials, prints, drawings, microforms and artifacts. In 1962 F. Cyril James declared that the newly founded McGill University Archives (MUA), while concentrating on the institutional records of McGill, had the mandate to acquire private papers of former faculty members. In the 1990s drew back their acquisition scope, and in 2004, new terms of reference on private acquisitions were introduced that included a wider McGill Community.
The Redpath Museum houses collections of interest to ethnology, biology, paleontology, mineralogy
Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the proces ...
and geology. Built in 1882, the Redpath is the oldest building in Canada built specifically to be a museum.
The McGill Medical Museum catalogues, preserves, conserves and displays collections that document the study and practice of medicine at McGill University and its associated teaching hospitals. The Medical museum features collections, individual specimens, artifacts, equipment logbooks, autopsy journals, paper materials and medical instruments and apparatus, 25 wax models, 200 mostly skeletal dry specimens, and 400 lantern slides of anatomic specimens. There is a special emphasis on pathology; there are 2000 fluid-filled preserved anatomical and pathological specimens. The Osler collection, for example, consists of 60 wet specimens, while The Abbott collection consists of 80 wet specimens, mostly examples of congenital cardiac disease.
Student life
Student body
As of Fall 2021, McGill's student population includes 26,765 undergraduate and 10,411 graduate students representing diverse geographic and linguistic backgrounds. Of the entire student population, 46.8% are from Quebec and 22.8% are from the rest of Canada, while 30.4% are from outside of Canada. International students hail from about 150 countries, with many students coming from the United States, China, and France. Over half of McGill students claim a first language other than English, with 19.7% of the students claiming French as their mother tongue and 33.5% claiming a language other than English and French, compared to 46.8% who claim English as their mother tongue. In Fall 2021, 34,379 students were enrolled in full-time studies, while 4,888 students enrolled in part-time studies.
Student organizations
The campus has an active students' society represented by the undergraduate Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) and the Post-Graduate Students' Society of McGill University
Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree.
The organization and stru ...
(PGSS). Due to the large postdoctoral student population, the PGSS also contains a semi-autonomous Association of Postdoctoral Fellows (APF). In addition, each faculty and department has its own student governing body, the largest faculty associations being the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) and the Science Undergraduate Society (SUS). The oldest is the Medical Students Society, founded in 1859.
SSMU supports more than 250 student-run membership clubs, which range from athletics, health and wellness, arts, and culture groups to professional development, charitable, volunteer, and political associations. It offers 17 student-run services, which provide services and resources to students regardless of membership, such as the Flat Bike Collective, Black Students' Network, McGill Students' Nightline
''Nightline'' (or ''ABC News Nightline'') is ABC News' late-night television news program broadcast on ABC in the United States with a franchised formula to other networks and stations elsewhere in the world. Created by Roone Arledge, the progra ...
, and Queer McGill (formerly Gay McGill),[Chester, Bronwyn]
"Queerly cause for celebration"
"McGill Reporter" March 21, 2002. Accessed May 5, 2008. which has supported queer
''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...
students since 1972.["Our Mandate"](_blank)
Queer McGill. Accessed May 5, 2008. SSMU is also affiliated with 11 independent student groups, which operate on campus but are outside of the student society's governance structure. These independent groups include student media outlets, a legal clinic, AIESEC McGill, and the International Relations Students' Association of McGill (IRSAM), which publishes the world's only all-inclusive international relations research journal, the McGill International Review
The ''McGill International Review'' (MIR) is an online daily publication based in Montréal, Québec and operated by the International Relations Students' Association of McGill (IRSAM), which provides academic analysis and coverage of world affai ...
, and has consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. IRSAM has hosted the McGill Model United Nations for university students since 1990 and the Secondary Schools United Nations Symposium since 1993.
Many student clubs are centred around McGill's student union building, the University Centre. In 1992, students held a referendum calling for the University Centre to be renamed for actor and McGill alumnus William Shatner. The university administration refused to accept the name and did not attend the opening because it traditionally names buildings in honour of deceased community members or major benefactors
Benefactor may refer to:
* ''Benefactor'' (album), a 1982 album by Romeo Void
* Benefactor (law) for a person whose actions benefit another or a person that gives back to others
* Benefication (metallurgy)
In the mining
Mining is the ext ...
—Shatner is neither. Nevertheless, the University Centre has been informally referred to as the Shatner Building ever since.
Student media
McGill has a number of student-run publications.''The McGill Daily
''The McGill Daily'' is an independent student newspaper at McGill University and is entirely run by students. Despite its name, the ''Daily'' has reduced its print publication to once a week, normally on Mondays, in addition to producing online- ...
'', first published in 1911, was previously published twice weekly,["About The McGill Daily"](_blank)
, ''The McGill Daily'', 2008. Retrieved June 13, 2008. but shifted to a once-a-week publication schedule in September 2013 due to tightened budgets. The '' Délit français'' is the ''Daily''s French-language counterpart. The combined circulation of both papers is over 28,000. The ''McGill Tribune
''The McGill Tribune'' is an independent campus newspaper published by the Tribune Publication Society in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The ''Tribune'' has been entirely student-run since its foundation in 1981, and has a good reputation for unbiased ...
'' currently publishes once a week, circulating approximately 11,000 copies across campus. ''The Bull & Bear
''The Bull & Bear'' is a student-run magazine at McGill University. Founded in 2003, the magazine was initially conceived as a platform for the voice of students in the Desautels Faculty of Management. In 2012, the magazine widened its scope to ...
'', operating under the Management Undergraduate Society, publishes 1,000 copies each month.
, "The Bull & Bear", 2013. Retrieved May 18, 2013. CKUT (90.3 FM) is the campus radio station. TVMcGill is the University TV station, broadcasting on closed-circuit television and over the internet.
The McGill University Faculty of Law is home to three student-run academic journals, including the world-renowned '' McGill Law Journal'', founded in 1952.
Greek life
The Greek system at McGill is made up of eleven fraternities and five sororities, including fraternities Alpha Delta Phi
Alpha Delta Phi (), commonly known as Alpha Delt, ADPhi, A-Delt, or ADP, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. Alpha Delta Phi was originally founded as a literary society by Samuel Eells in 1832 at Hamilton College in Cli ...
, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Sigma Phi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Delta Lambda Phi, Kappa Alpha Society, Phi Delta Theta
Phi Delta Theta (), commonly known as Phi Delt, is an international secret and social fraternity founded at Miami University in 1848 and headquartered in Oxford, Ohio. Phi Delta Theta, along with Beta Theta Pi and Sigma Chi form the Miami Triad ...
, Phi Kappa Pi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi and Zeta Psi, and sororities Alpha Omicron Pi
Alpha Omicron Pi (, AOII, Alpha O) is an international women's fraternity founded on January 2, 1897, at Barnard College on the campus of Columbia University in New York City. The main archive URL iThe Baird's Manual Online Archive homepage
"AOI ...
, Alpha Phi, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Gamma
Kappa Kappa Gamma (), also known simply as Kappa or KKG, is a collegiate sorority founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, United States.
It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States a ...
. Phi Kappa Pi, Canada's only national fraternity, was founded at McGill and the University of Toronto in 1913 and continues to be active. The Greek letter organizations at McGill are governed by the Inter-Greek Letter Council, the school's second-largest student group. Over 500 students or approximately 2% of the student population are in sororities and fraternities at McGill, on par with most Canadian schools but below the average for American universities.
Athletics
McGill is represented in U Sports by the McGill Redbirds
The McGill Redbirds (formerly the McGill Redmen) and McGill Martlets are the varsity athletic teams that represent McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Team name
According to Suzanne Morton, a professor of history at McGill, the name ...
(men's) and the McGill Martlets (women's). Following a major restructuring of the varsity programme for the fall semester of 2010, McGill is currently home to 28 varsity teams. McGill is known for its strong baseball, hockey and lacrosse programs. McGill's unique mascot, Marty the Martlet, was introduced during the 2005 Homecoming game.
The downtown McGill campus sport and exercise facilities include: the McGill Sports Centre (which includes the Tomlinson Fieldhouse and the Windsor Varsity Clinic), Molson Stadium, Memorial Pool, Tomlinson Hall, McConnell Arena, Forbes Field, many outdoor tennis courts and other extra-curricular
An extracurricular activity (ECA) or extra academic activity (EAA) or cultural activities is an activity, performed by students, that falls outside the realm of the normal curriculum of school, college or university education. Such activitie ...
arenas and faculties. Th
McGill Sport Medicine Clinic
can also be found in the McGill Sports Centre.
The Macdonald Campus facilities include an arena, a gymnasium, a pool, tennis courts, fitness centres and hundreds of acres of green space for regular use. The university's largest sporting venue, Molson Stadium, was constructed in 1914. Following an expansion project completed in 2010, it now seats just over 25,000, and is the current home field of the Montreal Alouettes.
Athletic history
In 1868, the first recorded game of rugby in North America occurred in Montreal, between British army officers and McGill students, giving McGill the oldest university-affiliated rugby club in North America. Other McGill-originated sports evolved out of rugby rules: football, hockey, and basketball. The first game of North American football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
was played between McGill and Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
on May 14, 1874, leading to the spread of American football throughout the Ivy League.
On March 3, 1875, the first organized indoor hockey game was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink between two nine-player teams, including James Creighton and several McGill University students. The McGill University Hockey Club, the first organized hockey club, was founded in 1877 and played its first game on January 31, 1877. Very soon thereafter, those McGill students wrote the first hockey rule book. A McGill team was one of four that competed in the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada
The Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) was an amateur men's ice hockey league founded on 8 December 1886, in existence until 1898. It was the second ice hockey league organized in Canada, after one in Kingston, Ontario started in 1883. ...
, founded in 1886. AHAC teams competed for the first Stanley Cup
The Stanley Cup (french: La Coupe Stanley) is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, an ...
in 1893; the AHAC became one of predecessor organizations of the National Hockey League. McGill alumnus James Naismith invented basketball in early December 1891. Norwegian Herman "Jackrabbit" Smith-Johannsen (later the coach of Canada's 1932 Olympic team) popularized cross-country skiing
Cross-country skiing is a form of skiing where skiers rely on their own locomotion to move across snow-covered terrain, rather than using ski lifts or other forms of assistance. Cross-country skiing is widely practiced as a sport and recreation ...
in North America from McGill's Gault Estate in Mont St. Hilaire.
There has been a McGill alumnus or alumna competing at every Olympic Games since 1908. Swimmer George Hodgson won two gold medals at the 1912 Summer Olympics
The 1912 Summer Olympics ( sv, Olympiska sommarspelen 1912), officially known as the Games of the V Olympiad ( sv, Den V olympiadens spel) and commonly known as Stockholm 1912, were an international multi-sport event held in Stockholm, Sweden, be ...
, ice hockey goaltender Kim St-Pierre won gold medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics
The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002 ( arp, Niico'ooowu' 2002; Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; nv, Sooléí 2002; Shoshoni: ''Soónkahni 2002''), was an internation ...
and at the 2006 Winter Olympics
The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially the XX Olympic Winter Games ( it, XX Giochi olimpici invernali) and also known as Torino 2006, were a winter multi-sport event held from 10 to 26 February 2006 in Turin, Italy. This marked the second t ...
. Other 2006 gold medalists are Jennifer Heil
Jennifer Heil (born April 11, 1983) is a Canadians, Canadian freestyle skiing, freestyle skier from Spruce Grove, Alberta. Heil started skiing at age two. Jennifer Heil won the first gold medal for Canada in the 2006 Winter Olympics games in Turi ...
(women's freestyle mogul) and goaltender Charline Labonté (women's ice hockey).
In 1996, the McGill Sports Hall of Fame
A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or Wiktionary:fame, fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actu ...
was established to honour its best student-athletes. Notable members of the Hall of Fame include James Naismith and Sydney Pierce
Sydney David Pierce (March 30, 1901 – May 17, 1992) was a Canadian Olympic hurdler and career diplomat. He was Canada's first Jewish ambassador.
Life and career
Born in Montreal, Quebec, he competed in track and field while attending McGill ...
.
A 2005 hazing
Hazing (American English), initiation, beasting (British English), bastardisation (Australian English), ragging (South Asian English) or deposition refers to any activity expected of someone in joining or participating in a group that humiliates, ...
scandal forced the cancellation of the final two games in the McGill Redmen football season.
In 2006, McGill's Senate approved a proposed anti-hazing policy to define forbidden initiation practices.
In 2018, after a slew of protests—both online and on-campus—an online vote revealed that 78.8 percent of the McGill student population were in favour of changing the varsity teams' "Redmen" name, with 21 percent against. The university's nickname emerged in the 1920s, and is thought to refer to the school's signature colour and Celtic roots. In the 1950s, both men's and women's teams came to be nicknamed the "Indians" and "Squaws", and some teams later adopted a logo of an Indigenous man wearing a headdress in the 1980s and '90s. In December 2018, McGill University released a working group report that revealed deep divisions between students and alumni who defend the nearly century-old name and those who feel it is derogatory to Indigenous students. In January 2019, it was announced that the principal Suzanne Fortier would decide whether or not to change the name by the end of the 2019 academic term.
On April 12, 2019, an announcement confirmed that the Redmen name for its men's varsity sports teams was dropped, effective immediately. No new name was planned; the groups would be known as the McGill teams. However, on 17 November 2020, McGill University revealed that the varsity men's sports teams would now be known as the " Redbirds". The name carries historical links to several McGill sports clubs, teams, and events. The former name would remain in the McGill Sports Hall of Fame and on items such as existing plaques, trophies and championship photos.
Fight song
''The McGill University song book,'' compiled by a committee of graduates and undergraduates, was published in Montreal by W.F. Brown, circa 1896.
Rivalries
McGill maintains an academic and athletic rivalry with Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to:
*Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada
*Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
**Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950)
**Queen's University of Belfast ...
in Kingston, Ontario. Competition between rowing athletes at the two schools has inspired an annual boat race between the two universities in the spring of each year since 1997, inspired by the famous Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. The football rivalry, which started in 1884, ended after Canadian university athletic divisions were re-organized in 2000; the Ontario-Quebec Intercollegiate Football Conference was divided into Ontario University Athletics and Quebec Student Sports Federation. The rivalry returned in 2002 when it transferred to the annual home-and-home hockey games between the two institutions. Queen's students refer to these matches as "Kill McGill" games, and usually show up in Montreal in atypically large numbers to cheer on the Queen's Golden Gaels
The Queen's Gaels (also known as the Queen's Golden Gaels) is the Athletics program representing Queen's University at Kingston in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Team colours are blue, red, and gold. The main athletics facilities include Richardson Me ...
hockey team. In 2007, McGill students arrived in bus-loads to cheer on the McGill Redmen, occupying a third of Queen's Jock Harty Arena.
The school also competes in the annual " Old Four (IV)" soccer tournament, with Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to:
*Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada
*Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
**Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950)
**Queen's University of Belfast ...
, the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario.
McGill and Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
are also athletic rivals, as demonstrated by the biennial Harvard-McGill rugby games, alternately played in Montreal and Cambridge.
File:Queen's-McGill-ChallengeBlade.jpg, The Queen's-McGill Challenge Blade
File:LorneGalesTrophy.jpg, The Lorne Gales Trophy
Historical links
* University of Glasgow: The original benefactor of McGill College, James McGill, studied here in the 1750s. McGill and the University of Glasgow renewed their partnership in 2015 with the signing of an agreement to develop joint PhD programmes, a Glasgow-McGill Exchange Scholarship and joint research appointments.
* University of Edinburgh: McGill's first (and, for several years, its only) faculty, Medicine, was founded by four physicians/surgeons who had trained in Edinburgh. McGill's ceremonial mace
A ceremonial mace is a highly ornamented staff of metal or wood, carried before a sovereign or other high officials in civic ceremonies by a mace-bearer, intended to represent the official's authority. The mace, as used today, derives from the or ...
is a gift from the University of Edinburgh presented to McGill in 2014.
Notable people
McGill counts among its alumni and faculty 12 Nobel laureates and 145 Rhodes Scholars
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
, both the most of any university in Canada, as well as five astronauts, the current prime minister and two former prime ministers of Canada, the current Governor General of Canada, 15 justices of the Canadian Supreme Court, at least eight foreign leaders, over eight dozen members of the Canadian Parliament, United States Congress, British Parliament, and other national legislatures, at least 10 billionaires, six Academy Award winners, 3 Grammy Award winners, four Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
winners, two Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, and at least five Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
winners.
In education, McGill alumni have played pivotal roles in the founding of several institutions of higher education. These include the first President of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Frank Wesbrook, the current President of UBC Santa J. Ono, the co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine William Osler, and the first President of the University of Alberta Henry Marshall Tory. More recent academic leaders include pro chancellor of Khaja Bandanawaz University
Khaja Bandanawaz University (KBNU), named after Sufi saint Bande Nawaz, is a private university located at Kalaburagi, Karnataka, India. It was officially established in 2018 by the Khaja Bandanawaz Educational Society under the ''Khaja Bandana ...
Syed Muhammad Ali Al Hussaini, President of Princeton University Harold Tafler Shapiro
Harold Tafler Shapiro (born June 8, 1935) is an economist and university administrator. He is currently a professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Shapiro serv ...
, President of Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne
Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne (born December 18, 1959) is a Canadian-American neuroscientist who is the 11th and current president of Stanford University.
Previously, he was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and then pre ...
, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge Stephen Toope.
In the arts, McGill students include four Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
winners, Templeton and Berggruen Prize winner Charles Taylor, essayist and novelist John Ralston Saul, and Emmy Award-winning actor William Shatner. Six Academy Award winners studied at McGill. Musical alumni include poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, composer and six-time Grammy award winner Burt Bacharach
Burt Freeman Bacharach ( ; born May 12, 1928) is an American composer, songwriter, record producer and pianist who composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. A six-time Gra ...
, and Win Butler and Régine Chassagne of the Grammy Award winning group Arcade Fire.
In the sciences, McGill graduates and faculty have received a total of 12 Nobel Prizes in disciplines ranging from Physiology, Medicine, Economics, Chemistry and Physics. McGill has also produced five astronauts out of 14 total selected in the CSA
CSA may refer to:
Arts and media
* Canadian Screen Awards, annual awards given by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television
* Commission on Superhuman Activities, a fictional American government agency in Marvel Comics
* Crime Syndicate of Amer ...
's history. Other prominent science alumni include the inventor of the artificial cell Thomas Chang
Thomas may refer to:
People
* List of people with given name Thomas
* Thomas (name)
* Thomas (surname)
* Saint Thomas (disambiguation)
* Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church
* Thomas the Ap ...
, inventor of the internet search engine Alan Emtage
Alan Emtage (born November 27, 1964) is a Barbadians, Bajan-Canadians, Canadian computer scientist who conceived and implemented the first version of Archie search engine, Archie, a pre-World Wide Web, Web Internet search engine for locating mat ...
, inventor of the explosives vapour detector (EVD-1) Lorne Elias
Lorne Elias is a Canadian chemist, inventor, and a pioneer in explosives detection technology. He invented the explosives vapour detector, EVD-1, a portable bomb detection instrument deployed at international airports in Canada in the 1980s. He c ...
, and Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio.
In law and politics, McGill alumni include three Prime Ministers of Canada ( John Abbott, Wilfrid Laurier and Justin Trudeau), one Governor General of Canada ( Julie Payette), and 15 justices of the Supreme Court of Canada. Foreign leaders who have graduated from McGill include President of Costa Rica Daniel Oduber Quirós, President of Latvia
The president of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Valsts prezidents ) is head of state and commander-in-chief of the Latvian National Armed Forces, National Armed Forces of the Latvia, Republic of Latvia.
The term of office is four years. Before 1999, it w ...
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, Prime Minister of Egypt Ahmed Nazif.[Prime Minister](_blank)
John Peters Humphrey
John Peters Humphrey (April 30, 1905 – March 14, 1995) was a Canadian legal scholar, jurist, and human rights advocate. He is most famous as the principal author of the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Childhood, ...
, law professor and director of the United Nations Division on Human Rights, wrote with Eleanor Roosevelt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In sport, McGill students and alumni include 121 Olympians who have won 35 Olympic medals. Other notable sporting alumni include the inventor of basketball James Naismith, the first medical doctor to win a Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif (; born February 11, 1991) is a Canadian football guard for the New York Jets of the National Football League (NFL). He played university football and attended medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, be ...
, and Triple Gold Club member Mike Babcock.
File:SirJohnAbbott1.jpg, 3rd prime minister of Canada Sir John Abbott (BCL, 1847).
File:The Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier Photo A (HS85-10-16871) cropped.jpg, 7th prime minister of Canada Sir Wilfrid Laurier (BCL, 1864).
File:James Naismith at Springfield College circa 1920.jpg, Inventor of the game of basketball James Naismith (BA, 1887).
File:Nobel Prize 2009-Press Conference KVA-23.jpg, Co-inventor of the charge-coupled device and Nobel prize laureate in Physics Willard Boyle
Willard Sterling Boyle, (August 19, 1924May 7, 2011) was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device.
As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he h ...
(BSc, 1947; MSc 1948; PhD 1950).
File:Star Trek William Shatner.JPG, Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
winner known for his portrayal of Captain Kirk in the ''Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'' franchise William Shatner (BComm, 1952).
File:Brenda Milner.jpg, Balzan Prize
The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the br ...
winner, referred to as "the founder of neuropsychology" Brenda Milner (PhD, 1952)
File:Leonard Cohen, 1988 01.jpg, Grammy Award winner and poet Leonard Cohen (BA, 1955).
File:Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.jpg, 6th President of Latvia
The president of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Valsts prezidents ) is head of state and commander-in-chief of the Latvian National Armed Forces, National Armed Forces of the Latvia, Republic of Latvia.
The term of office is four years. Before 1999, it w ...
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (PhD, 1965).
File:Ahmed Nazif IGF.JPG, 48th Prime Minister of Egypt Ahmed Nazif (PhD, 1983).
File:Julie Payette 2017.jpg, Former astronaut and 29th governor general of Canada Julie Payette (BEng, 1986).
File:Yoshua Bengio 2019 cropped.jpg, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio (BEng, 1986; MSc, 1988; PhD, 1991).
File:Trudeau visit White House for USMCA (cropped).jpg, The current and 23rd prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau (BA, 1994).
File:Joanne Liu at Chatham House 2015.jpg, Former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières Joanne Liu
Joanne Liu, M.D., O.Q., M.S.C, is a Canadian pediatric emergency medicine physician, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal, Professor of Clinical Medicine at McGill University, and the previous International President of M ...
(MDCM, 1991; IMHL, 2014).
See also
* List of McGill University people
* McGill University School of Architecture
The McGill School of Architecture (officially the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture since 2017) is one of eight academic units constituting the Faculty of Engineering at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1896 by S ...
* Schulich School of Music
* Academic dress of McGill University
The academic dress of McGill University describes the caps, gowns and hoods which are prescribed by the university for its degree candidates/holders. Until the mid-20th century, McGill also prescribed academic dress for its matriculating or enroll ...
* Canadian government scientific research organizations
* Canadian industrial research and development organizations
* Canadian university scientific research organizations Expenditures by Canadian universities on scientific research and development accounted for about 40% of all spending on scientific research and development in Canada in 2006.
Research in the natural and social sciences in Canada, with a few importa ...
* Cundill Prize in History, awarded by McGill
* History Trek History Trek: A Canadian History Site is a bilingual ( French and English) web portal made for children, containing reliable sources about Canadian history. It was developed by researchers at McGill University with the help of students who ranged fr ...
, developed by McGill researchers
* List of Canadian universities by endowment
* List of oldest universities in continuous operation
* Maude Abbott Medical Museum
* McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association
* McGill University School of Information Studies
* Montreal Laboratory (for nuclear research, World War II)
* Osler Library of the History of Medicine
The Osler Library, a branch of the McGill University Library and part of ROAAr since 2016, is Canada's foremost scholarly resource for the history of medicine, and one of the most important libraries of its type in North America. It is located i ...
* McGill University Department of Social Studies of Medicine
The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences is one of the constituent faculties of McGill University. It was established in 1829 after the Montreal Medical Institution was incorporated into McGill College as the college's first faculty; it was t ...
* U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities
* Montreal experiments The Montreal experiments were a series of experiments, initially aimed to treat schizophrenia by changing memories and erasing the patients' thoughts using Donald Ewen Cameron's method of “psychic driving”, as well as drug-induced sleep, intens ...
Notes
References
Further reading
* Axelrod, Paul. "McGill University on the Landscape of Canadian Higher Education: Historical Reflections." Higher Education Perspectives 1 (1996–97).
* Coleman, Brian. "McGill, British Columbia." McGill Journal of Education 6, no. 2 (Autumn 1976).
* Collard, Andrew. ''The McGill You Knew: An Anthology of Memories, 1920–1960''. Toronto: Longman Canada, 1975.
* Frost, Stanley B. ''The History of McGill in Relation to the Social, Economic and Cultural Aspects of Montreal and Quebec'' (Montreal: McGill University. 1979).
* Frost, Stanley B. ''McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning.'' Vol I. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1980)
* Frost, Stanley B.
McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning
'' Vol II.(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1984)
* Gillett, Margaret. ''We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill''. Montreal: Eden Press, 1981.
*
* Markell, H. Keith ''The Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, 1948–1978'' (Montreal: Faculty of Religious Studies, 1979)
McGill Milestones 1744-1999
Compiled by F. Cyril James 1972 and revised by Stanley B. Frost 1999. McGill Development Office.
McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal
McGill University Acceptance Rate
Scholarships Hall. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
* Young, Brian J.
The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum: The McCord, 1921–1996
' McGill-Queen's University Press 2000.
External links
*
McGill campus buildings
– Images Montréal
McGill yearbooks (1898–2000)
– McGill Library
{{Authority control
Educational institutions established in 1821
English-language universities and colleges in Quebec
Organizations based in Canada with royal patronage
Universities and colleges in Montreal
Universities in Quebec
1821 establishments in Lower Canada
U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities