Waterloo has achieved great things
This is just the beginning. Take a step back in time with us and look at some historic moments at Waterloo.
2017 is a year of milestones
Thank you for joining us in celebrating how far we have come as an institution.
60 years for our founding Faculty of Engineering and Co-operative Education program; 50 years for North America’s only Faculty of Mathematics; since Waterloo became home to Canada’s only English-language School of Optometry; since we turned our attention to improving health with the world’s first Department of Kinesiology — the foundation of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences; and since our Federation of Students was formed; and 40 years since Waterloo founded its Hong Kong Alumni Association.
Take a moment to look back on our firsts, the progress we've made, and some of our key accomplishments over the years:
Waterloos first building, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, is completed in December 1958.
The first co-op program outside of engineering is established in the Department of Physics in 1962.
In 1975, the first Arts co-op stream begins for Economics students, demonstrating the value of co-operative education in all fields.
In 2000, En-hui Yang, electrical and computer engineering, created a new compression algorithms that millions of people use to decompress file with no loss of data.
Canadas only pharmacy co-op program the School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Campus opens in downtown Kitchener in 2006.
In 2003, the William M. Tatham Centre for Cooperative Education and Career Services opens, the largest building dedicated to co-operative services at a Canadian university.
In 2004, Biologist John Thompson discovered gene eIF5A a death switch in plants and animals that determines whether cells live or die which also enhances crop yields and combat cancer and other diseases.
In 2007, the largest amount awarded to any Canadian university,the Canadian Foundation for Innovation announces a $33M grant to the University of Waterloo.
The first and only live-in campus-linked accelerator in Canada St. Pauls GreenHouse Social Impact Incubator, established in 2013.
University of Waterloo has a $2.6 billion per year economic impact in Ontario according to a 2013 Economic Impact Report.
Startups launched by Waterloo researchers, students and alumni: BlackBerry, Clearpath Robotics, D2L, Kik Interactive, Maplesoft, MappedIn, OpenText, Vidyard
Today, Waterloo has 31,380 undergraduate, 5,290 graduate students compared to 74 students when the university opened in 1957.