Researchers from the University of East Anglia have been flying into storms across the UK to help predict weather more accurately.

In a specially-adapted passenger jet, the group has measured the properties of high winds and rain which have hit the country in recent weeks.

The project aims to improve forecasting techniques.

The condensation and evaporation of water in storms is thought to influence how the weather develops and moves.

The research is led by the Natural Environment Research Council’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).

Prof Ian Renfrew, from the University of East Anglia, said storm research from the flights is vital

Along with 16 aircrew, the scientists change flight direction as the storm builds.

Using specialised equipment, the teams analyse the winds, humidity, temperature and cloud properties.

The group flew into a storm over Scotland in early December, as well as high winds over the south west of England in November.

Prof Ian Renfrew, of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “The observations we can obtain from these research aircraft flights are vital for working out how these storms work and how we can simplify some of the crucial processes for inclusion in our forecast models.”

Certain issues were foreseeable for the president of the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s largest and arguably most prestigious public university. State lawmakers were heading into a legislative session with budget axes at the ready, and nationally there were questions about the value of higher education.

Then, in early February, when he should have been testifying at the Capitol about the university’s financial needs, Mr. Powers suffered a pulmonary embolism. He was in the hospital for a week.

It was the first struggle in a year marked by high-profile battles involving Mr. Powers — to some, the university’s very own Dumbledore; to others, a particularly large bee in the bonnet of higher education reformers.

“How you do in challenging times is more important than how you do in easy times,” Mr. Powers said Wednesday in an interview with The Texas Tribune, acknowledging that the last 12 months fell into the challenging category.

Most recently, on Dec. 8, Mr. Powers abruptly demanded — and received — the resignation of Lawrence Sager as dean of the School of Law. Mr. Powers, who had formerly held the post, said the move was necessary to quell unrest among a deeply divided faculty. “You can’t have a unit be productive, frankly, both on the teaching and on the research side, if there’s not a sense of common enterprise,” he said. “And for whatever reason, that has broken down.”

Mr. Powers and Stefanie A. Lindquist, the interim dean of the law school, are now trying to calm the waters. Mr. Sager’s abrupt departure put an uncomfortable spotlight on the strained personal relationship between the two men, and it has also drawn scrutiny of the role private foundations play in the university’s finances.

Tensions at the law school spiked following the distribution of 75 pages of documents requested from the university by three faculty members. The records, which have since been made public online, reveal complaints about gender equity at the school and detail the use of money from the University of Texas Law School Foundation, a separate nonprofit organization, to supplement faculty salaries — including a $500,000 “forgivable loan” made in 2009 to Mr. Sager.

A day after Mr. Sager stepped down, Francisco Cigarroa, chancellor of the University of Texas System, called for a review of how “funds flow to the law school from the foundation” and “how these decisions are made” in order to “enhance processes, procedures and controls for those transactions in the future.” Dr. Cigarroa said the review’s findings would help establish “clear and transparent guidelines” for all the university’s institutions and affiliated foundations.

The law school revelation has provided fodder for groups already critical of the university’s financial management. The fact that Mr. Powers’s and Mr. Sager’s accounts of who knew about the loan differ — Mr. Powers said he did not; Mr. Sager said it was his “clear understanding” that he did — is a “cause for concern” that highlights a need for greater transparency, said Thomas Lindsay, the director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Higher Education.

“In a time when there’s real questioning of the motives of large institutions, this sort of stuff doesn’t help,” said Mr. Lindsay, a recent hire by the center, which has close ties to Gov. Rick Perry and provided the fuel for the debate last spring over the public university’s productivity.

Not long after Mr. Powers was discharged from the hospital in February, Gene Powell, the new Perry-appointed chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, hired Rick O’Donnell, a former director of Colorado’s department of higher education, as a special adviser. Mr. O’Donnell’s employment was terminated after 49 days.

But Mr. O’Donnell’s provocative questioning of the value of academic research and his ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation — which had promoted a set of seven higher education proposals that many academics found misguided — prompted questions about the direction in which the system was headed and significant backlash from well-heeled alumni. So did the arrival of three new regents appointed by Mr. Perry, whose staff members referred to the group as their “kick-ass regents.”

The furor reached such heights that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and the House speaker, Joe Straus, both Republicans, created a new joint oversight committee focused on higher education governance and transparency.

At a recent hearing of the committee, Senator Judith Zaffirini, Democrat of Laredo and the co-chairwoman, asked Mr. Powell if he had any intention of firing Mr. Powers — something Mr. Powers said was “not something I spend much time worrying about.” (Mr. Powell said he did not intend to fire Mr. Powers.)

In August, Dr. Cigarroa unveiled a new framework for the University of Texas System that was embraced by both sides, and tempers cooled. But in September, Mr. Powers still referred to the higher education community as “a house divided” in his State of the University address. He said this week that “divisions remain over what’s the right direction to go” across the state and the nation.

On the campus, support for Mr. Powers is far-reaching. A performance review prepared by University of Texas System staff members for Dr. Cigarroa and the board in late spring noted: “There is a tangible pride in what is being achieved, shared by all, and campus-wide appreciation and support of President Powers. Such universal support is rare on a campus, but suffice to say that at U.T. Austin, Bill Powers has earned it through his exemplary leadership.”

But the University of Texas does not exist in a vacuum, and sometimes other campuses can create problems. In addition to Mr. Powers’s other dramas, the football team played what could be its very last Thanksgiving Day matchup against its longtime rival Texas A&M after the Aggies’ move to the Southeastern Conference. “There has not been a meeting that says, ‘O.K., that question has been decided,’ ” Mr. Powers said, adding, “We try to deal with issues that we’ve got to deal with now.”

Perhaps in another year — one without continuing upheaval over the nature of public higher education or legislative budget cuts or an unpleasant regime change at the law school — such a significant break from tradition might rank higher.

“Would I have guessed there would be all of those in one year? That’s my job,” Mr. Powers said. “Hopefully, I won’t have a pulmonary embolism next year.”

Via NYTimes

At the University of Missouri, a leaked classroom video that went viral in the spring and triggered an uproar on conservative media has prompted what may be the first restrictions on students recording lectures since the advent of portable tape recorders more than 50 years ago. Under the new policy, students must first obtain written permission from their professors and classmates.

Administrators say they want to make sure that students and faculty don’t discover their conversations posted online or become afraid to talk openly. The new policy “protects the sanctity of the classroom for our students so they can freely discuss their thoughts and opinions,” said Steve Graham, senior associate vice president for academic affairs for the four-campus Missouri system.

But some Missouri professors are crying foul. They say the restrictions are impractical and contradict the public university’s goal of promoting shared knowledge.

“…We are public, taxpayer-funded faculty, and so we should think long and hard about any sort of restrictions on the rights of our students to record us as we work,” said Charles Davis, a journalism professor and former executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

The proposal, which awaits approval by campus attorneys, is a response to a video of a labor studies lecture by University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Judy Ancel. Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website obtained a leaked copy and edited hours of classroom lectures to suggest that she and a classroom colleague advocated union violence.

While the school stood behind Ancel, director of the university’s Institute for Labor Studies, a former union business manager who helped teach the class at the university system’s St. Louis campus offered to resign amid the uproar. He has since been asked to return to his adjunct professor post, Ancel said.

The proposed policy, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press upon request, notes that “unauthorized distribution of such materials is a violation of academic standards and may violate copyright and/or privacy rights.” Students and professors who violate the policy could face university disciplinary sanctions.

Ancel has previously said that her comment about union violence was a paraphrased remark of a statement made in a documentary shown in class about the 1968 Memphis garbage workers’ strike and Martin Luther King’s assassination. The recordings were obtained from a university website available only to students enrolled in the class.
But the problem was not the recording but the “twisted interpretations by others of the content,” Davis said. “No policy could deal with what others do with content.”

Faculty objections led to a clarification that students would still be able to record lectures unless someone objects. But the gist of the restrictions remains.

Student government leader Zach Toombs called the proposal “confusing, vague and (one that) prohibits students from taking advantage of studying and note-taking methods that have been used for a long, long time.” The Missouri Students Association had asked school officials to distinguish between classmates sharing notes and unauthorized public distribution on the Internet.

Journalism professor David Herzog said the restrictions send a “mixed message” at a time when Missouri and other universities are aggressively promoting open access and technology.

“If we want to innovate, we need to break down barriers to information and conversation, not erect new ones,” he said.

The debate in Missouri raises broader questions about the use and ownership of what are known as “captured lectures,” said Kenneth Green, who directs The Campus Computing Project, a southern California-based research group that studies the role of information technology in American higher education.

A 2009 national survey by the group found that just 56 percent of campuses had “formal policies regarding the ownership of web-based curriculum resources and intellectual property developed by faculty.”

Though universities have not restricted recording, he said, a modern “gotcha” culture attuned to circulating everyday missteps and misstatements increases the impact of the practice.

“The technology to do it has gotten much better,” Green said. “And the stakes have gotten much higher.”

For Ancel, the proposed policy doesn’t go far enough. She cited a classroom conversation in which one student who appeared in the Big Government video worried that her liberal views would create problems at the workplace with a conservative boss.

“I don’t want to have to think about what I said in class because my boss might see it,” the student told Ancel.

排名指标体系
由于历史的原因，两岸四地的高等教育体制差异较大，因此，只能选择那些共同适用于两岸四地大学实际情况、具有跨地区可比性的指标。根据我们从事国际性大学比较与排名的经验和对国内外主流大学排名所采用的指标的研究和分析，我们在世界大学学术排名（超级链接）所采用的指标体系的基础上，又增加了数个同时适用于两岸四地教育状况的指标，形成了包括人才培养、科学研究、师资质量和学校资源4大类13项指标的指标体系。为了更好地体现大学的水平和质量，我们对所有与规模有关的指标都同时使用了绝对数和相对值。在指标权重的安排上我们遵循了《高等教育机构排名的柏林原则》（超级链接）中要求优先考虑产出指标的原则，对于7项产出指标各分配10%的权重，对于另外6项投入和过程指标各分配5%的权重。计算单项指标得分时，令表现最好的大学的该项指标为100分，其它按其与最高值得比例得分，一所大学的总得分由各单项指标加权得出。

“We are always going to be sensitive to the response and welfare of our students and make sure they are safe wherever they are in the world,” said Brad Bartel, MTSU provost. “We have reached a point where we urge these students to come home for their own good.”

Suggested by Bartel and fully supported by university President Sidney A. McPhee, MTSU plans to provide funds for airfares of the students who agree to return as soon as they can book a flight.

MTSU students have been attending Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata, Nagoya Gakuin University, Saitama University, Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka and Tokyo University in Tokyo. Eight of nine students had a year-long commitment.

Rhonda Waller, director of the Education Abroad and Student Exchange Office at MTSU, said eight study-abroad students from Japan at MTSU this semester have indicated their immediate family members are OK. She said her office has been communicating with the MTSU students and their families by phone, e-mail and Facebook.

The move is necessary for safety concerns, according to Michael D. Allen, vice provost for research and dean of the College of Graduate Studies at MTSU.

Allen is a nuclear engineer who spent 12 years of his career studying severe nuclear reactor accidents that produce results similar to what is occurring at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant on Japan’s north-east coast.

“I have performed experiments on all of the phenomena that can occur in a severe nuclear reactor accident, such as hydrogen explosions, steam explosions, melting of the lower head of the reactor pressure vessel, high-pressure melt ejection of molten core debris into the reactor cavity and core concrete interactions,” he said. “In addition, I have melted down a nuclear reactor inside an annular core research reactor to study core relocation and fission product release.”

Allen was tapped for interviews by multiple media outlets around the country, including Fox News, on Thursday.

The U.S. Embassy, earlier this week, at the urging of U.S. scientists warned American citizens in Japan to evacuate a much broader area (50 miles) around the plant than has been requested by Japanese officials (about 12 miles).

Allen, in a Thursday interview with The Daily News Journal, said he would suggest “getting as far away (from the plant) as possible.”
“There is significant potential, if the winds blow in a certain direction, for disaster,” he explained. “If the winds shifted south and blew the radiation towards Tokyo, for example, the impact could be catastrophic and that is the worst-case scenario.”

Scientists in the United States and Japan have said it is likely that any radiation emitting from the plant would be blown out of the area toward the Pacific Ocean by the area’s trade winds, where the radiation would then disperse in the ocean.

Allen agreed and added there’s no risk of any of the radiation reaching the United States.

He expects that officials at nuclear plants around the world will evaluate the need for greater security of diesel generators, especially during disasters.

The destruction of diesel generators at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Japan’s northeast coast by a tsunami, following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake, led to the dire situation.

“You’ve got to have power at a nuclear power plant to cool the fuel inside,” he said.

On Thursday, the city announced that it had received 18 expressions of interest in establishing a research center from universities and corporations around the world. Struggling to compete with Silicon Valley, Boston and other high-tech hubs, officials charged with developing the city’s economy have identified several city-owned sites that might serve as a home for the research center for applied science and engineering that they hope to establish.

The list of institutions that responded includes the Abo Akademi University in Finland, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, as well as schools in England, India and Switzerland. American schools as far away as California and as close by as Manhattan and Hoboken, N.J., also indicated that they were interested.

A total of 27 schools responded, some teaming up with each other or with corporations to send joint submissions. One joint submission came from New York University, Carnegie Mellon University, the City University of New York, the University of Toronto and I.B.M.

“We received a response that was certainly equal to or exceeded our expectations,” said Robert K. Steel, the deputy mayor for economic development.

Mr. Steel said he and other city officials would study the responses, then solicit more concrete proposals in what would amount to a competition for a big — or bigger — presence in the city.

For sheer enthusiasm and ambition, it may prove difficult to match Stanford University, which has proposed building its first degree-granting satellite campus away from its home base in Palo Alto, Calif., said Lisa Lapin, a Stanford spokeswoman.

Stanford has suggested that it would revive the Goldwater Hospital campus on Roosevelt Island in the East River as an outpost that could eventually hold as many as 2,200 students and a few hundred faculty and staff members.

Stanford estimates that the initial phase of the campus, which could be completed by the end of 2015, would cost about $250 million. The university expects that its own spending would be supplemented by the city and philanthropists, Ms. Lapin said.

“It’s not about bringing money to the home campus,” Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, said in a recent interview. “It will require an investment of institutional resources to be successful.”

City officials did not reveal any more details of the responses, which they said included proposals for “hundreds of millions of dollars” of private investment.

So far, city officials have not said how much they would be willing to spend on the project, but they have identified four sites that the city might be willing to make available to the winning bidder. Along with the old hospital site on the southern end of Roosevelt Island, they include space on Governors Island in New York Harbor and complexes of buildings at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and on Staten Island.

Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said that the respondents had expressed interest in all of the sites. Mr. Pinsky said he expected the development corporation to release a request for proposals, the second of two steps in the solicitation process, in the middle of the year. But he said officials had not decided whether bidding would be limited to the first respondents.

“We set a very ambitious goal out there,” Mr. Pinsky said. “And from a preliminary look, it appears that these are serious proposals with sweeping ambitions.”

However, Coleman, speaking outside a state House subcommittee hearing on public university budgets, declined to say whether the university will raise tuition to make up for the cuts. She said that decision was still under consideration.

Coleman was one of four university presidents who spent today before House and state Senate appropriations committees explaining the impact the cuts proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder would have on their institutions.

Oakland University President Gary Russi told a Senate subcommittee that previous budget cuts resulted in higher tuition hikes than he would have liked. “We’ve done a lot with what resources we have,” he said. “It is getting harder to address financial aid.”

The presidents argued against further cuts. “You’re going to make heart-wrenching decisions,” Ferris State University President David Eisler said. The state has made a “decade-long disinvestment in students,” he said.

The governor’s proposed budget would cut 15% from each university’s state appropriation. It would also shift funding from the general fund to the school aid fund.

Snyder has also proposed an incentive pool that would reward universities for holding tuition increases under 7%. That incentive would add back between roughly 5-10% of the 2011-12 appropriation amount based on the university’s average tuition/fee increase over the last five years.

John Nixon, the budget chief, told the House appropriations committee that a larger budget cut was necessary for the universities because of the state’s overall budget crisis, according to Nixon’s spokesman, Kurt Weiss.

The goal is “take the hit now and not just nickel and dime it,” Nixon told the committee.

Coleman reminded legislators that U-M has been through tough economic times before and has grown through them. That growth has helped the university continue to develop its value for students, she said.

“I will not allow its value to diminish under my leadership,” Coleman said. “We’ve shown great discipline in our fiscal management. In all our cost containment measures we protect our core mission – academics and research.

Coleman said U-M has cut more than $130 million in six years by scaling back on expenses ranging from utility costs to planting fewer flowers.

“When we look to reduce costs, it’s always with an eye to our academic mission,” she said. “Students and families see U-M as a value for their dollar.

U-M’s Board of Regents voted last July to lower the amount of the endowment it pays out to the general operations of the university from 5% of the total endowment to 4.5%.

Coleman said having that endowment, the second-largest of any public university in the U.S., has allowed it to weather a “horrific” investment market.

深圳大学坐落深圳市南山半岛，面临后海，遥对香港，环境优美，是经济特区十大历史建筑之一，荣获全国校园建筑设计一等奖。学校占地约3.1平方公里。

1980年，中国创办深圳经济特区；1983年，深圳经济特区创办深圳大学。

教育部高度重视特区大学建设，两院院士张维教授首任校长；清华大学为主，援建建筑、电子类学科；北京大学为主，援建中文、外语类学科；中国人民大学为主，援建经济、管理类学科。

社会各界热情支持特区大学建设。香港企业家邵逸夫、于元平、胡应湘、梁国勋，南太集团、三星集团、杜邦公司和深圳18家大型国有企业与一批校友企业捐资助学。

深圳大学的历史使命是：以改革为动力，建设一所为经济特区提供骨干人才和高端人才培养、高端智力服务、高端科技成果的特区大学；一所走上国际、能够与世界各国高等院校平等交流互相观照的窗口大学；一所努力创新办学体制、积极探索现代大学制度的实验大学。
建校27年，深圳大学紧随深圳特区快速腾飞。

1995年，通过国家教委本科教学合格评估。
1996年，经国务院学位委员会批准，获硕士学位授权。
2006年，经国务院学位委员会批准，获博士学位授权。
2007年，通过国家教育部本科教学优秀评估。
特区大学用最短的时间形成了从学士、硕士到博士的完整人才培养体系。

学校坚持本科立校。适应本科教育大众化，秉持有教无类、因材施教、厚积薄发、经世致用的教育教学理念，树立并践行办学以育人为本，育人以素质为本，素质以做人为本；以素质教育为基础，专业教育为主干，积极推进教学改革，精心锻造教学特色，努力提高教学质量，培养素质高、基础好、上手快、转型快的事业骨干和创业、创新型人才。

学校创新人才培养模式。按院系招生，支持学生自选专业。实行学分制，八年弹性学制，主辅修制，双专业、双学位制，文理互补学分制度，课外创造发明学分制度，国内外学校学分互换制度。学生在校期间将进行体质与心理健康、英语口语、信息技术应用、普通话等五项基本素质和技能测试。

学校重视学生就业，鼓励学生创业。投入专项资金建立学生创业园，与企业共建学生就业实践基地，为学生提供全程化的就业指导教育和自主创业培训；建立、健全就业信息数据；充分利用经济特区、“珠三角”优良的就业环境，积极举办校友企业的校园专场招聘会，全力打造良好的就业服务体系和有特色的大学生创业平台。在全校师生的共同努力下，学校近几年的总体就业率达98%以上。

学校形成了“视野开阔，注重实际，热衷创新，崇尚竞争”的人才培养特色，涌现了马化腾、史玉柱、周海江等一批杰出人才。他们锐意进取，勇于探索，为深圳经济特区、为国家做出了贡献。

学校现有本科教学学院23个。设有65个本科专业，其中哲学、环境工程、高分子材料与工程、汽车服务工程和光电子技术科学5个专业为我校今年新增专业。71个硕士点（其中光学工程、信息与通信工程、生物医学工程为一级学科硕士点），4个专业硕士点（工商管理硕士、法律硕士（法学）、法律硕士（非法学）、教育硕士）和1个工程硕士培养领域，3个博士点（政治经济学、光学工程、信号与信息处理，其中光学工程为一级学科博士点）。现有专业涵盖了哲学、文学、经济学、法学、教育学、理学、工学、管理学、医学等9个学科门类。目前，在校本科生25165人，全日制研究生2730人。

学校坚持学科兴校和科研强校。建有理工类重点实验室15个，国家重点实验室分室3个；人文社科重点研究基地6个，省级重点学科和重点扶持学科12个，省级名牌专业9个，国家高等学校特色专业建设点4个。建立了以代表性成果为评价对象、以学术影响和社会贡献为评价标准的科研水平评价制度。2003-2009年，全校共发表论文9430篇，其中被SCI、EI、ISTP收录2620篇，被CSSCI收录1377篇；出版专著335部、译著58部。2003-2010年4月，全校共获得国家技术发明二等奖、解放军科技进步二等奖、广东省科学技术奖、广东省哲学社会科学优秀成果奖及国家各部委等省部级以上科研成果奖51项，拥有各类专利122项。2003-2009年，人文社科类和自然科学类共承担各类纵向项目1469项，其中“国家自然科学基金”、“863”、“973”、“国家社会科学基金”等项目246项，国防科研项目38项；2006-2009年科研经费总量平均每年超过1个亿。

学校聚合了一支优秀的教职工队伍。现有专任教师1648人。其中教授336人，有中国科学院院士、中国工程院院士、国家级有突出贡献专家、教育部学科教学指导委员会委员、国务院特殊津贴专家、博士生导师、国家青年教师培养对象、全国优秀教师等一大批高水平人才，平均年龄40岁。

学校教学科研设施优良。图书馆藏书429.9万册，教室多媒体化，教学实验设备先进，体育设施充足、齐全、现代化。建有完备的校园网服务系统和校园一卡通身份识别、选课注册和货币支付系统，网络端口35000个，初步建成数字化校园。

学校立足特区，走向世界。着力培育国际化特色，学校与欧洲、北美、亚洲、澳洲的50多个国家和地区的高校建立了教育合作和文化交流关系，与英美日韩多所大学结成姐妹学校，交换教师、互派学生，互认学分。学校现有来自60多个国家和地区的各类留学生1000余名，外籍教师70余名。

学校提倡师生平等、自由对话、独立思考，充分尊重学生公民权利。鼓励学生全面发展，支持学生课外活动，引领学生建设先进校园文化。建有学生活动专用基地，活动专用媒体，提供活动专用经费。校园文化生动丰富，学校直接创办学生文化艺术团体28个，学生自发组织的社团协会100多个。

学校以勤勉、务实、高效的作风和效率，追求精致管理和精致服务，营造了一个民主、和谐，具有浓厚学术氛围，洋溢人文精神，充满青春活力的育人环境。

学校的发展目标是，到2020年，建设成为一所与深圳率先基本实现现代化相适应，在国内外较大影响的高水平、有特色的综合性教学研究型大学。

University of Waterloo
Motto Concordia cum veritate
(In harmony with truth)
Established 1957
Type Public
Endowment $214 million
Chancellor V. Prem Watsa
President David Lloyd Johnston
Faculty 1,030 full-time
Staff 2,190
Undergraduates 24,891 full-time, 1,670 part-time
Postgraduates 3,497 full-time, 797 part-time
Location Waterloo, ON, Canada
Campus Urban/Suburban, 4km2 (1000 acres)
Sports teams Waterloo Warriors
Colours Gold, black, and white
Nickname UW
Affiliations AUCC, IAU, COU, ATS, CIS, CUSID, OUA, Fields Institute, Ontario Network of Women in engineering, CBIE, CUP
Website uwaterloo.ca

The university’s main campus is set upon 32 hectares (80 acres) at the foot of Mount Royal in Downtown Montreal. A second campus, the Macdonald Campus, is situated on 6.5 square kilometres (1,600 acres) of fields and forested land in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, 30 kilometres west of the downtown campus. With 21 faculties and professional schools, McGill offers degrees and diplomas in over 300 fields of study, including medicine and law. Although the language of instruction is English, students have the right to submit any graded work in English or in French, except when learning a particular language is an objective of the course. Over 34,000 students attend McGill, with international students comprising one-fifth of the student population.

McGill is recognized for its award-winning research and participates in research organizations both within Canada and in the world, including the G13, the Association of American Universities, and Universitas 21. Its undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools consistently ranks the top university in national rankings such as those published by Maclean’s, and among the top 50 universities in regional and worldwide rankings, including the Times Higher Education (THE) – QS World University Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. With around 200,000 living alumni worldwide, students and professors at McGill have been recognized in fields ranging from the arts and sciences, to business, politics, and sports. Notable alumni include six Nobel Laureates(out of eight Nobel Laureates affiliated with the university), three astronauts, two Canadian prime ministers, four justices of the Canadian Supreme Court, three foreign leaders, nine Academy Award winners, three Pulitzer Prize winners, and twenty-five Olympic medalists. A nation-leading 130 students have also won Rhodes Scholarships to pursue graduate studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

McGill University
Motto Grandescunt Aucta Labore (Latin)
Motto in English By hard work, all things increase and grow
Established 1821
Type Public university
Endowment C$763 million
Chancellor H. Arnold Steinberg
Principal Heather Munroe-Blum
Faculty 6,061
Staff 9,345
Undergraduates 23,758
Postgraduates 8,756
Location Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Campus Urban
Downtown: 32 ha (80 acres)
Macdonald Campus: 6.5 km² (1,600 acres)
Former names University of McGill College (1821–1885)
Colours Red
White
Mascot Marty the Martlet
Athletics 49 varsity teams
McGill Redmen (men’s)
McGill Martlets (women’s)
Affiliations AAU, G13, Universitas 21, ATS, CUSID, UArctic, AUCC, CIS, QSSF, CBIE.
Website www.mcgill.ca