Simon Fraser University
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Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The 170-hectare (420-acre) main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and comprises more than 37,000 students and 200,000 alumni. The university was created in an effort to expand higher education across Canada.

Simon Fraser University is a member of multiple national and international higher education associations, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, International Association of Universities, and Universities Canada. SFU has also partnered with other universities and agencies to operate joint research facilities such as the TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, which houses the world's largest cyclotron, and Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, a major centre for teaching and research in marine biology.

Undergraduate and graduate programs at SFU operate on a year-round, three-semester schedule. In 2015, SFU became the second Canadian university to receive accreditation from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

Simon Fraser University was founded upon the recommendation of a 1962 report entitled Higher Education in British Columbia and a Plan for the Future by John B. Macdonald. He recommended the creation of a new university in the Lower Mainland and the British Columbia Legislature gave formal assent on March 1, 1963, for the establishment of the university in Burnaby. The university was named after Simon Fraser, a North West Company fur trader and explorer. In May of the same year, Gordon M. Shrum was appointed as the university's first chancellor. From a variety of sites that were offered, Shrum recommended to the provincial government that the summit of Burnaby Mountain, 365 meters above sea level, be chosen for the new university. Architects Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey won a competition to design the university, and construction began in the spring of 1964. The campus faces northwest over Burrard Inlet. Eighteen months later, on September 9, 1965, the university began its first semester with 2,500 students.

The campus was noted in the 1960s and early 1970s as a hotbed of political activism, culminating in a crisis in the Department of Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology in a dispute involving ideological differences among faculty. The resolution to the crisis included the dismantling of the department into today's separate departments.[better source needed] During this time, Thelma Finlayson became the university's first female faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences. She would later become their first professor emerita upon her retirement in 1979.

In 2007, the university began offering dual and double degree programs by partnering with international universities, such as a dual computing-science degree through partnership with Zhejiang University in China and a double Bachelor of Arts degree in conjunction with Australia's Monash University. It has also partnered with India's Premiere "Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay".

In 2009, SFU became the first Canadian university to be accepted into the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Starting in the 2011–2012 season, SFU competed in the NCAA's Division II Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) and has now transitioned all 19 Simon Fraser teams into the NCAA.

On September 9, 2015, SFU celebrated its 50th anniversary. Over its 50 years, the university educated over 130,000 graduates.

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