University Of Toronto

See http://www.utoronto.ca/

Home of the worst-engineered buildings of any university. Robarts library is sinking, and the building where they teach engineering has drinking fountains and fire hoses approximately 1/2.54 the height they should be... (why 1/2.54 is left as an exercise to the reader). Um... that would be accessibility for the disabled. A noble if not aesthetically pleasing accomplishment. (I vote for metric/English mixup.) Possibly, but I have doubts. It's not a new building, and you really have to bend over and stick your head in the little cubby-hole to get at it. It's not even really accessible to wheelchairs because of its awkward positioning. Clearly, it is a matter of inches... or, maybe not

Did the engineering faculty design the buildings in question?

I think some snooty architecture prof. designed a bunch of the buildings. Robarts is supposed to look like a peacock, but really it looks like a giant mecha-turkey. And there's this new residence being built on Spadina and Harbord that is so ugly it looks like a prison. I would hate to live there.

Supposedly, the UniversityOfWaterloo library is sinking, too, and the UniversityOfCalgary? one as well; I can't speak for any others. In each case, the supposed cause is neglect of the weight of the books. How could they forget every time? I can't say for sure, but it sounds a lot like an UrbanLegend.

The seventh floor of RobartsLibrary? is said to be evacuated, in an effort to lighten up the building. None of the elevators allow access to this floor; the signs all indicate "No access to this floor" full stop. But who knows what's *really* there...

It's the control room for the mecha-turkey.

Yes, the west end of campus, where the engineering, physics, chemistry, and generally "scientific" subjects are taught is hideous. The eastern half (home to "artsy" programs) is gorgeous, especially in the fall.

Guess which half the campus tours focus on? You could have a whole bus full of chemical engineering wannabes, and they'd still spend most of their time at the Department of Medieval Studies.

A friend of mine recently took a course in management of information systems at the UniversityOfCalgary?. In the engineering buildings, we had lecture theatres with these strange desks that had puny, little tables. In the management buildings, they have plush chairs and Ethernet connections at every desk. -- JasonYip

Meanwhile, back at the UniversityOfToronto, the new Bahen Information Technology building is a horrible waste of capital. It was $20 million short of completion, and while it has very nice mahogany insets everywhere, and $800 000 granite pillars, the ethernet and power jacks have yet to be installed, let alone the entire sixth floor, defeating the building's use as an engineering and computer science lecture space. And just to make life difficult, every single room was designed in precisely the wrong way to suit its function. Lecture halls have opaque doorways that force students to interrupt the previous class to see if they can wander in, if the doors open in the right direction anyway. The conference rooms have refracting glass walls that diffuse blinding sunlight into our eyes during sunset, which only complements the horrid acoustic design of the rooms. And there's this high pitched buzzing on the seventh floor that drives all of us crazy. To Bahen I say Bah!

While we're on the subject of those mahogany insets, let's not forget the positively obscene amount of glass panelling all over the place in random places in the building - mostly under handrails - where it is simply useless.

UofT, where you're not just a number, you're less than a number. The UofT administroids ripped me off $10 while I was a starving student there. Now I have to laugh whenever they send me, a "loyal alumnus", letters asking for cash. What kind of "higher education" idiots rip-off an undergrad $10 and instantly obliterate hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of future goodwill? By contrast, the UniversityOfNorthCarolina was a great place for graduate school and both I and my wife are lifetime members of their alumni association and regular if not large contributors. -- AndyPierce (still pissed off after all these years)

I hear ya, Andy!

On the positive side, the UniversityOfToronto developed the TuringLanguage. -- MichaelFeathers

Positive?!? Hehe. -- RH

Located in the CityOfToronto

what appears to be promotional literature follows... [First bit edited for accuracy.]

The University of Toronto, has been ranked as #1 amongst universities that include a medical school in Canada for ten consecutive years by MacLean's magazine, a widely propagated (but somewhat controversial) yearly ranking of Canadian universities.

Some facts:

developed first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant and artificial pancreas
isolated gene that allows plants to grow in salt water
developed the chemical laser
developed the anti-blackout suit, later adapted to create the astronaut space suit
created the infant cereal Pablum

Noted Alumni:

authors Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry and Stephen Leacock
film directors David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Arthur Hiller, Norman Jewison
opera singers Measha Brueggergosman, Teresa Stratas and Maureen Forrester
business leaders Edward S. "Ted" Rogers (Rogers Cable) and Jeff Skoll (eBay)
media personalities Peter Gzowski, Barbara Amiel, Evan Soloman and Barbara Frum
astronauts Roberta Bondar and Julie Payette
comedy duo Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster
Prime Minister Paul Martin; also William Lyon Mackenzie King, Arthur Meighen and Lester B. Pearson
former Ontario premiers Bob Rae, David Peterson and William Davis
Ontario's first woman lieutenant-governor Pauline McGibbon?
Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and past Governor General Vincent Massey

Noted Faculty:

Sir Frederick Banting and J.J.R. Macleod won the Nobel Prize in 1923 for their work with Charles Best in the discovery of the role of insulin in controlling diabetes
John C. Polanyi won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering work that led to the development of the laser
Political scientist Janice Gross Stein
geneticist Tak Mak, the first to clone a T-cell gene, a key part of the immune system
literary critic and author Northrop Frye
author and dramatist Robertson Davies
medical biophysicist Lap-Chee Tsui led the team of researchers who discovered the cystic fibrosis gene
communications guru MarshallMcLuhan
engineering pioneer Ursula Franklin, known for her work on the social impact of technology
Peter St. George-Hyslop led the team that discovered two genes responsible for early-onset Alzheimer's
astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg

Did you know....

U of T has six Nobel Prize-winning graduates, the highest number of any Canadian university
over the last two decades, our professors have received almost a quarter of all national awards although they represent just over seven per cent of Canada's university professors
more than half of full-time undergraduates are women
U of T is in the midst of the largest capital expansion program in 40 years, building over 1 million square feet of classrooms, research facilities, libraries and residences
U of T has over 4,000 international students, about seven per cent of our student population
the Royal Ontario Museum, Pollution Probe, Canadian Opera Company, the Toronto Symphony and the Royal Conservatory of Music were all started at U of T

interesting facts, but who cares what MacLean's says?

Lots of people heading off to university (or their parents) apparently.

CategoryCollege