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The University of Alberta (U of A or UAlberta; French: Université de l'Alberta) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, the university's first president. It was enabled through the Post-secondary Learning Act. The university is considered a "comprehensive academic and research university" (CARU), which means that it offers a range of academic and professional programs that generally lead to undergraduate and graduate level credentials.

The university comprises four campuses in Edmonton, an Augustana Campus in Camrose, and a staff centre in downtown Calgary. The original north campus consists of 150 buildings covering 50 city blocks on the south rim of the North Saskatchewan River valley, across and west from downtown Edmonton. About 37,000 students from Canada and 150 other countries participate in 400 programs in 18 faculties.

The university is a major economic driver for Alberta. In 2022, it contributed $19.4 billion to Alberta's economy, or over five per cent of that year's gross domestic product. The University of Alberta has produced over 260,000 graduates; awards received by alumni and faculty members include three Nobel Prizes and 72 Rhodes Scholarships.

History

The university was chartered in 1906 in Edmonton, Alberta as a single, public provincial university through the University Act, passed during the first session of the then-new Legislative Assembly, with Premier Alexander C. Rutherford as the legislation's sponsor. The university was modelled on the American state university, with an emphasis on extension work and applied research. The governance was modelled on Ontario's University of Toronto Act of 1906, with a bicameral system consisting of a senate (faculty) responsible for academic policy, and a board of governors (citizens) controlling financial policy and having formal authority in all other matters. The president, appointed by the board, was to provide a link between the two bodies and perform institutional leadership.

Establishment in Edmonton

Heated wrangling took place between the cities of Calgary and Edmonton over the location of the provincial capital and of the university. It was stated that the capital would be north of the North Saskatchewan River and that the university would be in a city south of it. The city of Edmonton became the capital and the then-separate city of Strathcona on the south bank of the river, where Premier Alexander Rutherford lived, was granted the university. When the two cities were amalgamated in 1912, Edmonton became both the political and academic capital.

With Henry Marshall Tory as its first president, the University of Alberta started operation in 1908. Forty-five students attended classes in English, mathematics and modern languages, on the top floor of the Queen Alexandra Elementary School in Strathcona while the first campus building, Athabasca Hall, was under construction. In a letter to Rutherford in early 1906, while he was in the process of setting up McGill University College in Vancouver, Tory wrote, "If you take any steps in the direction of a working University and wish to avoid the mistakes of the past, mistakes which have fearfully handicapped other institutions, you should start on a teaching basis."

Of the 45 students in the university's first cohort in 1908, seven were women. These original seven formed a type of sorority, called Seven Independent Spinsters, or S.I.S., with the intention of supporting the women's social and academic needs. In 1909, the group changed its name to the Wuaneita Club, and then to the Wuaneita Society in 1910. All female students at the university were initiated into the Society every fall. The group heavily appropriated from Cree culture: the name Wuaneita is a rough equivalent to the Cree word meaning "kind-hearted"; their initiation ceremonies featured costumes with feathers and headdresses; the society president was called the "Big Chief": and the motto of the group was "payuk uche kukeyow, mena kukeyow uche payuk,” a rough translation into Cree of "all for one, one for all" that is still engraved above the outer doors of Pembina Hall on main campus. For much of the Wuaneita Society's existence, as they were coopting First Nations traditions and ceremonies, the Potlatch ban was in effect in Canada. The group wound down in 1973 once the population of female students on campus had outgrown the need for a supportive society.

Academics

The U of A has about 39,300 students, including 7,700 graduate students and 7,800 international students representing 151 countries. The university has 3,620 academic staff along with 15,380 support and trust staff. University professors have won more 3M Teaching Fellowships (Canada's top award for undergraduate teaching excellence) than any other Canadian university, 41 awards since 1986. The university offers post-secondary education in about 388 undergraduate and 500 graduate programs. Tuition and fees for both fall and winter semesters are slightly more than $5,000 for a typical undergraduate arts student, although they vary widely by program. The University of Alberta switched from a 9-point grading scale to the more common 4-point grading scale in September 2003. Seventy-two Rhodes Scholars have come from the University of Alberta. The University of Alberta also holds 2,599 Academic All-Canadians, the most of any University in Canada.

Faculties and colleges

The university has 18 faculties:

Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences focuses on natural, biological, and human resources. The faculty is home to the Devonian Botanic Garden in Devon, Alberta. The garden runs a series of winter hardiness trials on trees, shrubs, herbs, annuals and bulbs. The garden collection consists of Primula, Meconopsis, Allium Rosa (shrub), alpines, and herbs and plants traditionally used by Aboriginal Peoples. There is a microfungus collection and a herbarium that contains more than 4,800 livery genotypic filamentous fungi.

Alberta School of Business offers MBA, BCom, PhD, ExecEd, Exec MBA, and Master of Financial Management degrees. The business school was the first in Canada to be accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, in 1968. and maintained its accreditation in 2012 making it the longest accredited business school in Canada.

Faculty of Arts is home to a spectrum of arts programs and departments, from Anthropology and Community Service Learning to History and Women's Studies.

Augustana Campus is located in a satellite campus in Camrose, Alberta. It comprises the departments of Fine Arts, Humanities, Physical Education, Science, and Social Sciences.

Campus Saint-Jean is the U of A’s francophone faculty with programs in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Business, Science, Education, Nursing, and Engineering. Programs range from language learning to college and undergraduate programs to graduate programs all the way up to the doctoral level.

Faculty of Education offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in elementary and secondary education, or a combined program. The School of Library and Information Studies is also a part of this Faculty.

Research

The university is a member of the U15 universities and the Worldwide Universities Network, an organization of 19 universities on six continents. In 2018, Research Infosource named the University of Alberta the fifth best research university, with a sponsored research income (external sources of funding) of $513.313 million in 2017. In the same year, the university's faculty averaged a sponsored research income of $242,100, while its graduate students averaged a sponsored research income of $69,400. The university receives nearly $500 million each year for research from external sources. The university houses over 400 distinct research laboratories.

The university's research performance has been noted in several bibliometric university rankings, which uses citation analysis to evaluates the impact a university has on academic publications. In 2019, the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities ranked the university 81st in the world, and fourth in Canada, whereas the University Ranking by Academic Performance 2018–19 rankings placed the university 78th in the world, and fourth in Canada.

The University of Alberta is the national scientific and administrative headquarters for:

• Sustainable Forest Management Network
• Canadian Obesity Network
• Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology
• Antarctic Institute of Canada

Researchers at the University of Alberta have made discoveries in a number of fields.

Arts and humanities research

The Faculty of Arts includes eight Canada Research Chairs in fields as diverse as English and Film Studies, Sociology, Philosophy, Art and Design, and History and Classics.

In 2014, the Department of English and Film Studies ranked #22 in the World QS University Rankings by subject.

In 2018, the Faculty of Arts launched several Signature Areas of Research and Creative Collaboration: Digital Synergies; Language, Communication and Culture; Mediating Science and Technology; Shifting Praxis in Artistic Research/Research-Creation; and Stories of Change.

The Faculty houses several research centres and institutes, including:

• Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI)
• Canadian Institute for Research Computing in the Arts (CIRCA)
• Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS)
• Canadian Literature Centre/Centre de littérature canadienne
• Institute for Public Economics
• Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology
• Kule Folklore Centre
• Kule Institute for Advanced Studies (KIAS)
• Parkland Institute
• Prince Takamado Japan Centre for Teaching and Research
• Sound Studies Institute

Rankings and reputation

The University of Alberta has ranked in several post-secondary rankings. In the 2023 Academic Ranking of World Universities rankings, the university ranked 91st in the world and fourth in Canada. The 2025 QS World University Rankings ranked the university 96th in the world, and fourth in Canada. The 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked the university 109th in the world, and fifth in Canada. In the 2022–23 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking, the university ranked 136th in the world, and fourth in Canada. The Canadian-based Maclean's magazine ranked the University of Alberta 5th in their 2023 Canadian Medical Doctoral university category. The university was ranked despite having opted out — along with several other universities in Canada — of participating in Maclean's graduate survey since 2006.

Along with academic and teaching rankings, the university has also been ranked by publications that evaluate the employment prospects of its graduates. In the Times Higher Education's 2022 global employability ranking, the university ranked 172nd in the world, and sixth in Canada. In QS's 2022 graduate employability ranking, the university ranked 99th in the world, and fifth in Canada.

Campuses

The university has five distributed campuses including, in addition to the North Campus, two auxiliary satellites: Campus Saint-Jean in southeast Edmonton, and Augustana Campus in Camrose, 90 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. An extensively renovated and refurbished historic Hudson's Bay department store in downtown Edmonton, renamed Enterprise Square, serves as a campus for adult students belonging to the Faculty of Extension. The university owns a set of large parcels of mostly undeveloped land (used as an experimental farm and the site of several agricultural and sports facilities) slightly south of the main campus, called South Campus (previously the University Farm).

North Campus

The North Campus is the original location of the University of Alberta. Located on the southern banks of the North Saskatchewan River, it has 150 buildings on 92 hectares (230 acres) of land.

Architect Barton Myers completed the long-range campus plan in 1969 and continued as a planner for the university until 1978.

The distinctive cupola of the Dentistry/Pharmacy Centre on North Campus was featured in a commemorative stamp issued by Canada Post in 2008, the year of the university's centenary.

South Campus

Located two kilometres south of the North Campus, the South Campus is much larger in terms of land area. The two campuses are linked by the Edmonton LRT system. South Campus/Fort Edmonton Park station is near Foote Field and the Saville Community Sports Centre, forming a natural gateway to the new campus architectural model, since 2009. Along with Health Sciences, University, and Enterprise Square stations, the LRT connects the U of A through four stations. In addition to educational facilities, the university is closely affiliated with six non-profit day care centres, many of which run partnered initiatives such as the Physical Literacy for Active Youth (PLAY) Program as an educational practical learning experience for University of Alberta students.

Much of the university's agricultural research in food safety and crop use for food and industrial products happens at the Edmonton Research Station Experimental Farms on South Campus. This campus is also home to the Saville Community Sports Centre, a 32,500-square-metre, multi-use recreation facility that hosts 14 varsity teams and several community sports clubs. In 2013, the Saville Centre became the new training centre for the Canadian senior women's basketball team.

Campus Saint-Jean

The Campus Saint-Jean is a francophone campus located five kilometres east of the main campus, in Bonnie Doon, formerly named "Faculté Saint-Jean". It is the only French-language university campus west of Manitoba. Due to increasing enrolment, the Campus Saint-Jean is undergoing expansion, acquiring new laboratory and classroom spaces. Students at Campus Saint-Jean pursue bachelor's degrees in the sciences or arts, or complete their first year of Engineering, after which they often transfer to the University of Alberta's main campus. Bilingual Nursing and Business programs are also available.

Investment in health and science

$1.6 billion in construction has been undertaken at the university related to fields in health and science. The projects expand the University of Alberta's research capacity in the field of health. Over the past five years, the University of Alberta has averaged nearly $500 million in external research funding a year. The funding is expected to increase due to added research and teaching capacity.

Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science

A major project, completed in the spring of 2011 with a grand opening on September 23, 2011, was the $400-million, Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS), a facility for interdisciplinary research groups, as well as the Department of Physics, the Faculty of Science offices and the Interdepartmental Science Students' Society's office. Three buildings – V-Wing (a large one-floor building composed of 10 lecture halls, of which two will remain), the Avadh Bhatia Physics Building (a six-storey building formerly housing the Department of Physics offices and laboratories), and the old Centre for Subatomic Research – were demolished to make way for CCIS.

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