The University of Waterloo (commonly referred to as Waterloo, UW or UWaterloo) is a public research university with a main campus located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on 404 hectares (1,000 acres) of land in "Uptown" Waterloo, adjacent to Waterloo Park. The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and ten faculty-based schools. The university also operates four satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges. Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.University of Waterloo is most famous for its Cooperative Education (co-op) programs, which allow the students to integrate their education with applicable work experiences. University of Waterloo operates the largest post secondary co-op program of its kind in the world, with over 19,000 co-op students and 5,200 employers.
The institution was established on 1 July 1957 as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, a semi-autonomous entity of Waterloo College, then an affiliate of the University of Western Ontario. This entity formally separated from Waterloo College and was incorporated as a university with the passage of the University of Waterloo Act by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1959. It was established to fill the need to train engineers and technicians for Canada's growing postwar economy. It grew substantially over the next decade, adding a faculty of arts in 1960, and the College of Optometry of Ontario which moved from Toronto in 1967.
The university is co-educational, and as of 2016 has 30,600 undergraduate and 5,300 post-graduate students. Alumni and former students of the university can be found across Canada and in over 140 countries. The university ranked 200-300th in the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, 152nd in the 2015–2016 QS World University Rankings, and 179th in the 2015–2016 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Waterloo's varsity teams, known as the Waterloo Warriors, compete in the Ontario University Athletics conference of the Canadian Inter university Sport.
