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Trinity Western University (TWU) is a Christian liberal arts college and research university with campuses in Langley and Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. TWU is a research institution offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in the humanities and sciences as well as in several professional schools. The school is a member of Universities Canada and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

Founded in 1962, Trinity Western enrols over 6,000 students annually. As Canada's largest Christian university, TWU offers 48 undergraduate degree programs and 20 graduate degree programs. TWU has an average first-year class size of 25 students. There are over 30,000 TWU alumni around the world.

Trinity Western is a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Its varsity teams, known as the Trinity Western Spartans, are members of U Sports. The Spartans have won 14 U SPORTS National Championships and 34 Canada West Championships.

Dr. Todd F. Martin is TWU’s sixth president, inaugurated on April 24, 2025.

In April 2025, it was announced that Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in Deerfield, Illinois, would join with Trinity Western University and cease operations at its Chicago-area campus.

History

Trinity Western University traces its history back to 1957, when a committee was established by the Evangelical Free Church of America to study and consider the feasibility of a liberal arts college on North America's Pacific Coast. The committee decided on a location between Vancouver and Seattle, in rural British Columbia, in what is now the Township of Langley. Trinity Junior College began as a two-year college in 1962, and its name was changed to Trinity Western College 10 years later, following a significant period of growth in enrolment and program options. After 20 years as a transfer college, Trinity Western began awarding baccalaureate degrees in 1980. In 1985 the British Columbia provincial government, through the Trinity Western University Act, legislated the institution to its current position as a privately-funded Christian university and it became known as Trinity Western University. It is the fourth-oldest university in the province of British Columbia after the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Insignia and symbols

Trinity Western's motto is Turris Fortis Deus Noster. The Latin motto is translated as "A Mighty Fortress is Our God". The inspiration for the motto came from a famous hymn of the same name written by Martin Luther.

The university's coat of arms was granted by the Royal College of Arms, and was presented to University pPresident R. Neil Snider in 1986 by the Lieutenant Governor of B.C. on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. A torch symbol is also used prevalently at the university, as the coat of arms is reserved to authenticate the highest official University academic and legal documents.

Spartans is the nickname of the varsity teams that compete for Trinity Western University. The name, which comes from the Ancient Greek civilization of Sparta, originated when the university's first intercollegiate team the men's basketball team, began competing in 1964.

Academic programs

Trinity Western University is an independent privately-supported institution and offers a liberal arts education. Since its founding in 1962, it has identified as a Christian institution although it has always been governed independently from any church or religious organization. It is currently administered by a 17-member Board of Governors to which the President reports.

Undergraduates fulfill general education requirements, choose among a wide variety of elective courses, and pursue departmental concentrations and interdisciplinary certificate programs. Students usually take classes through the university's semester system, with three semesters taking place each year. The fall semester lasts from September to December, and the spring semester from January to April. For students wishing to take classes over summer, the university offers several courses on campus as well as travel studies through its summer semester programming, which runs from May to August.

Graduate students take courses through the School of Graduate Studies. Master's degree programs are available in the humanities, education, linguistics, psychology, business, nursing, and theology.

Undergraduate tuition for the 2025–26 academic year is $779 CDN per credit hour.[14] International students pay roughly the same fees as Canadian domestic students. 97% of students received scholarships and financial aid from TWU in 2019.

In 2021, TWU launched a new Executive MBA (EMBA) program with students from diverse industries and professions, and in 2022, TWU welcomed the first cohort into its first-ever PhD program, a Doctorate in Philosophy of Nursing.[

Undergraduate

Undergraduate degrees awarded by Trinity Western University include the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Bachelor of Business Administration, Bachelor of Education, and Bachelor of Human Kinetics. There is also a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering transfer program in collaboration with the University of British Columbia's engineering department. Honours programs are available in a number of majors.

Undergraduate courses in the humanities are traditionally either seminars or lectures held one- or two-times a week with an additional conversation-based seminar called a "discussion group". To graduate, all students must complete a liberal arts core curriculum known as the "University Core", comprising 18 classes of various subjects. Students have a high degree of latitude in creating a self-structured Core, which allows students to study subjects of interest outside their chosen major. Most of the Core classes at Trinity Western are led by a full-time professor (as opposed to a teaching assistant).

Student life

In 2011, Trinity Western received an A level rating in The Globe and Mail's "Overall Student Satisfaction" category and an A+ rating for its "Sense of Community on Campus". Campus housing is provided to students in all years of study, and all students in their first and second year are required to live on campus in residential halls unless living with family. Third and fourth year students have the option of living off-campus. Trinity Western offers its students nearly 100 organizations, teams, and sports.

The university was founded by a committee commissioned by the Evangelical Free Church of America, a denomination in the Radical Pietistic tradition, to establish a Christian liberal arts college. Accordingly, the committee's mission has shaped the campus and the university. Trinity Western University has maintained extremely close ties with the broader Christian church, and historically has had close relationships with the Evangelical and Mainline Protestant denominations, as well as with the Mennonite tradition recently. This has also resulted in the university having a significant American influence when compared with other Canadian universities. More than one out of every six students is American.

The university previously mandated that all students abide by a code of conduct called the Community Covenant, which was described as "a solemn pledge in which members place themselves under obligations on the part of the institution to its members, the members to the institution, and the members to one another." As of August 2018, students are no longer required to sign the covenant.

The covenant bans sexual relationships outside of a marriage between a woman and a man, as well as behaviour such as hazing, verbal and physical harassment, dishonesty including plagiarism, theft or destruction of another's property, the use of illegal drugs, consuming alcohol on campus, or consuming pornography.

A 2015 ruling in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that "discrimination inherent in the Community Covenant extends not only to [LGBTQ] persons, but also to women generally; to those persons of any gender who might prefer, for their own purposes, to live in a common law relationship rather than engage in the institution of marriage; and to those persons who have other religious beliefs... Despite some efforts by TWU to contend that the Community Covenant does not operate in a discriminatory fashion, it is self-evident that it does." The court ruling noted that "failure to adhere to the conduct imposed by the Community Covenant, carries with it serious consequences." The covenant mandated "at a minimum, suspension" for "sexual intimacy involving persons of the same sex." The school's board of governors voted on August 9, 2018, to make the Community Covenant optional for current and incoming students, effective at the beginning of the 2018–19 school year. TWU's president at the time, Robert Kuhn (2014–19), said in a statement that the change was so that the university could be "inclusive of all students wishing to learn from a Christian viewpoint and underlying philosophy."

Campus

The main campus is located in the rural Township of Langley, British Columbia, occupying 157 acres (0.64 km2) on the edge of historic Fort Langley. Fort Langley, a former fur-trade post of the Hudson's Bay Company, was selected by Governor Sir James Douglas as the provisional capital of the newly established Colony of British Columbia in 1858. There is a residence hall on campus named in honour of Douglas. The campus is situated about 45 minutes southeast from Vancouver and about 2 hours north from Seattle.

Campus buildings vary in age and style from Hanson Chapel, completed in 1962 (the first building completed on campus), to the Robert G. Kuhn Centre, completed in 2022. Today the campus consists of 36 buildings and residence halls that house the university's various departments and students.

The architecture on campus is inspired by British Columbia, Rural B.C., and the Pacific Northwest. Modern red brick covers Alloway Library, Larsen Atrium, and Stanley Nelson Student Centre at the main part of campus. Other significant buildings on campus include Robert N. Thompson Building which houses the Political Science, History, English, and Geography departments. The newly built and yet to be named Music Building is home to the School of Art, Media + Culture. The Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences are housed in the Neufeld Science Centre, which experienced a major renovation in 2011, and the Vernon Stromback Centre at the east end of campus. In total there are 33 buildings on the university campus.

During President Raymond's tenure, the university built the Music Building in 2010, and in 2011 Fraser Hall and the Neufeld Science Centre received major renovations in 2011. In 2012 the Vernon Strombeck Centre received a significant interior and exterior renovation, and in 2013 the prominent Robert N. Thompson building was re-modeled... In September 2017, Trinity Western opened the first new dormitory in twenty-five years, as a result of rising enrolment.

Cafeteria meals are now served in an all-you-care-to-eat style, and three smaller venues around campus offer additional food services.

Academic facilities

The Norma Marion Alloway Library is the main library for undergraduate students, holding a circulation of over 300,000 books, 12,000 periodical subscriptions, and computer access to thousands more titles. The university archives house several special collections: the Mel Smith Archives, the Robert N. Thompson Archives, and the Lyle Wicks Papers, which chronicle Canada's political history through the works and personal documents of these three political figures. The library also has a Korean collection.

Controversies and court cases

In November 2016 The Province reported on the school's acceptance or lack thereof of LGBTQ students. According to the story, gay students were subjected to a culture of shame.

Teaching certification program accreditation lawsuit

In 1995, Trinity Western launched a teaching certification program, but the British Columbia College of Teachers denied accreditation of the university's program, arguing that the "Responsibilities of Membership" agreement students must sign (replaced in 2009 with the Community Covenant) is discriminatory and that those graduating from Trinity Western's program will discriminate against gay students. The lower courts in British Columbia and, later, the Supreme Court of Canada, ruled in favour of Trinity Western University, stating that there was no basis for the BCCT's decision, and, moreover, that "the concern that graduates of TWU will act in a detrimental fashion in the classroom is not supported by any evidence".

The final analysis of the case, as reported by the Factum of the Intervener, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, was that "In the circumstances of this case the Council of the B.C. College of Teachers failed to conduct such an enquiry and erroneously concluded that equality of rights on the basis of sexual orientation trump freedom of religion and association. They do not."

Faculty of Law accreditation lawsuits

Automatic accreditation of graduates from TWU's proposed faculty of law were approved by most of the provincial law societies across Canada in 2014, except the Law Society of Upper Canada (now the Law Society of Ontario) and the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society.

Law Society of British Columbia accreditation reversal

On June 11, 2014, 3,210 of the Law Society of British Columbia's 13,000 members voted in support of a resolution to reverse its decision to grant the faculty accreditation and requested that the province revoke its accreditation of the law program because of the view that it discriminates against unmarried couples and homosexual individuals. 968 members voted against with 8,822 not registering a vote. On September 26, 2014, the governing members of the Law Society decided to hold a binding referendum of their membership to determine whether to revoke Trinity Western's accreditation. Just over 8,000 BC lawyers voted in the referendum, with 74% voting in favour of a resolution declaring that the proposed law school at TWU would not be an approved Faculty of Law for the Law Society's admission program. Voter turnout was just under 60%.

Nova Scotia: Trinity Western University v Nova Scotia Barristers' Society

The case was brought before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court from December 16–19, 2014. Trinity Western argued that denying automatic accreditation to TWU law graduates is an infringement on the students' right to freedom of religion.

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