Acadia Advantage

The Acadia Advantage is an academic programmie unique in Canada whereby each or the undergraduate (and many or the graduate) students receive laptop computers to use from September to May. Honours students may use their computers in the summer before their last year. Other students have the option to rent their laptops over the summer months. From 1996-2004, the university had a contract with IBM; the 2004-2005 year saw a shift to the Dell Lattitude D600 computers.

Students come to Acadia with different computer backgrounds, but almost every student leaves with some highly developed computer skills. Students have access to resources like the User Support Centre, and faculty receive a lot of support from the Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology .

Most of the classrooms at Acadia are equipped with ergonomic chairs, acoustic tile, data projectors, and network drops or wireless network access. There are over 7,000 data connections on the campus, and many areas support wireless internet access including the Student Union Building (Acadia Students' Union), the Vaughan Memorial Library , the Acadia Divinity College, and the KC Irving Centre (named for K.C. Irving).

Former Acadia President Dr. Kelvin Ogilvie , explains, "We are moving the classroom into a new, dynamic, and exciting environment that brings students and faculty together in a fashion that has never before occurred. The dynamism of the classroom is unprecedented. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination."

The Acadia Advantage Programme has received recognition from the Smithsonian Institution, and is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In addition, Acadia University received the Pioneer Award for Ubiquitous Computing in 2001, it has achieved high rankings in the annual Maclean's University Rankings, including Best Overall for Primarily Undergraduate University in their opinion survey, and it received the Canadian Information Productivity Award in 1997 as it was praised as the first university in Canada to fully utilize information technology in the undergraduate curriculum.