学校介绍
院校简介多伦多大学(英语:University of Toronto),位于安大略省的多伦多市,与安大略省政府及议会环绕在市中心的女王公园四周,现已发展成为一所以圣乔治校区(St.George Campus, UTSG)为主,密西沙加校区(Mississauga Campus, UTM)和士嘉宝校区(Scarborough Campus, UTSC)为辅的,以"一主两翼"为格局的世界知名研究性大学。学校始于1827年英国乔治四世颁布的皇家宪章,是殖民时代上加拿大最早建立的高等学府。它早期名为“国王学院”,直至于1849年脱离圣公会而成为非宗教大学,并改为现名。受英国大学制度影响,多伦多大学是美洲少数实行独立书院制的学府,各书院享有高度自治权。在学术及研究方面,多伦多大学一直处于领先位置。其经费、捐款、国家教授奖项、研究出版量及藏书量皆为加拿大之首。它于过去一世纪的主要贡献包括发现胰岛素及干细胞,发明电子起搏器、多点触控技术、电子显微镜、复制T细胞、飞行员衣,以及发现首个经核证的黑洞。多伦多大学是美国大学协会仅两名在美国本土外成员之一。大学荣获诺贝尔奖的教授人数是加拿大最多的。多伦多大学每年发表的科研论文数量在北美仅次于哈佛大学,引用数量位居世界前五。据2006年统计,多伦多大学教授中包括美国文理科学院外籍院士15名(占加拿大总数65%),美国科学促进会外籍院士20名(占加总数28%)。并在1980至2006年间,累计获得盖尔德纳(Gairdner)基金会国际奖11次(占加总数52%),被授予古根海姆研究员头衔44人(占加总数44%),英国皇家学会外籍院士16人(占加总数42%),美国国家学院外籍院士10人(占加总数36%)及斯隆(Sloan)研究员23人(占加总数30%)。在多个世界大学排行榜上,多伦多大学是加拿大唯一一所跻身全世界前二十名的高等学府。多伦多大学的学生享有任何一所加拿大大学都不具备的学术氛围。在课余他们亦享有多伦多市的种种舒适便利。
历史沿革
The founding of a colonial college had long been the desire of John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. As an Oxford-educated military commander who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, Simcoe believed a college was needed to counter the spread of republicanism from the United States. The Upper Canada Executive Committee recommended in 1798 that a college be established in York, the colonial capital.
A painting by Sir Edmund Walkerdepicts University College as it appeared in 1858.
On March 15, 1827, a royal charter was formally issued by King George IV, proclaiming "from this time one College, with the style and privileges of a University ... for the education of youth in the principles of the Christian Religion, and for their instruction in the various branches of Science and Literature ... to continue for ever, to be called King's College." The granting of the charter was largely the result of intense lobbying by John Strachan, the influentialAnglican Bishop of Toronto who took office as the first president of the college. The original three-storey Greek Revival school building was constructed on the present site of Queen's Park.
Under Strachan's stewardship, King's College was a religious institution that closely aligned with the Church of England and the British colonial elite, known as theFamily Compact. Reformist politicians opposed the clergy's control over colonial institutions and fought to have the college secularized. In 1849, after a lengthy and heated debate, the newly elected responsible government of Upper Canada voted to rename King's College as the University of Toronto and severed the school's ties with the church. Having anticipated this decision, the enraged Strachan had resigned a year earlier to open Trinity College as a private Anglican seminary. University College was created as the nondenominational teaching branch of the University of Toronto. During the American Civil War, the threat of Union blockade on British North America prompted the creation of the University Rifle Corps, which saw battle in resisting the Fenian raids on the Niagara border in 1866.
A Sopwith Camel aircraft rests on the Front Campus lawn in 1918, during World War I.
Established in 1878, the School of Practical Science was precursor to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, which has been nicknamed Skule since its earliest days. While the Faculty of Medicine opened in 1843, medical teaching was conducted by proprietary schools from 1853 until 1887, when the faculty absorbed the Toronto School of Medicine. Meanwhile, the university continued to set examinations and confer medical degrees during that period. The university opened the Faculty of Law in 1887, and it was followed by the Faculty of Dentistry in 1888, when the Royal College of Dental Surgeons became an affiliate. Women were admitted to the university for the first time in 1884.
A devastating fire in 1890 gutted the interior of University College and destroyed thirty-three thousand volumes from the library, but the university restored the building and replenished its library within two years. Over the next two decades, a collegiate system gradually took shape as the university arranged federation with several ecclesiastical colleges, including Strachan's Trinity College in 1904. The university operated the Royal Conservatory of Music from 1896 to 1991 and theRoyal Ontario Museum from 1912 to 1968; both still retain close ties with the university as independent institutions. The University of Toronto Press was founded in 1901 as the first academic publishing house in Canada. The Faculty of Forestry, founded in 1907 with Bernhard Fernow as dean, was the first university faculty devoted to forest science in Canada. In 1910, the Faculty of Education opened its laboratory school, the University of Toronto Schools. The First and Second World Wars curtailed some university activities as undergraduate and graduate men eagerly enlisted. Intercollegiate athletic competitions and the Hart House Debates were suspended, although exhibition and interfaculty games were still held. The David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill opened in 1935, followed by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies in 1949.The university opened satellite campuses in Scarborough in 1964 and in Mississauga in 1967. The university's former affiliated schools at the Ontario Agricultural College and Glendon Hall became fully independent of the University of Toronto and became part of University of Guelph in 1964 and York University in 1965, respectively. Beginning in the 1980s, reductions in government funding prompted more rigorous fundraising efforts. The University of Toronto was the first Canadian university to amass a financial endowment greater than C$1 billion.