Biology at the University of Toronto

General

This example document (for a nonexistent department at UofT) is only to give a flavour for how the material can be presented. There is no need, for example, to have all the departmental information in a single page, as is done here. There could be other pages devoted to department history, research facilities, etc, with links from this overview page to these related documents. There is one advantage, however, of keeping this material together on one page -- it allows the user to easily print the entire document for reading away from the computer.

The University of Toronto is the largest university in Canada with 2500 graduate faculty and more than 9000 full and part-time graduate students. Metropolitan Toronto has a population of 3,000,000 people who provide a rich multicultural mix and create an interesting and stimulating environment outside the University.

Students are supervised by a graduate faculty with approximately 16 members in the Department of Biology, plus seven faculty that are cross-appointed from The Department of Plant Physiology. In addition, a valuable pool of young, talented expertise is resident in the fifteen research associates and postdoctoral fellows. The Department currently has approximately 20 graduate students, coming to Toronto from around the world with a wide range of academic backgrounds. The Graduate Biology Students Association (GRABSA) represents student interests at faculty meetings and sponsors a lively social and athletic program.

Research Facilities

The Department provides many facilities to aid astronomical research, and students and staff use national and international observatories all over the world and in space. The Department has a special fund for students to pay for travel to such observatories as the UTSO in Chile, CFHT in Hawaii, the VLA in New Mexico, and the IUE satellite groundstation in Maryland.

The offices of the Department on the St. George campus house the Departmental library. This large, comprehensive, collection has extensive holdings ranging from the old publications of biological field workers to large computer databases.

History of the Department

Biology became a major department in 1905. The first chair of the Department, Dr. Roland Fishburn, introduced several teaching programs in aid of the Faculty of Medicine, and went on to develop major programs in Bological Research. This led to the construction of the Biology Building in 1911, constructed on what is now the site of the Robarts Library. The facilities were moved and significantly upgraded when the Department moved to the Natural Sciences Complex in 1978. The Department, along with the University as a whole, maintains an active private fund raising campaign to provide renewal of facilities and new opportunities.