Trent University is a small liberal arts oriented institution located in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. It was opened in 1964 to deal with the influx of baby boomers into Canadian universites. Originally located in several old houses in two different locations in downtown Peterborough (Catherine Parr Traill College (women) and Peter Robinson College (men)) it moved to its current campus, Symons Campus, on the North side of Peterborough in 1966. It used to be described as "Canada's Outstanding Small University" and routinely performs well in national rankings of Canadian university quality. It has one of the highest per-capita rates of external research funding in Canada. It has one of Canada's better continuing education departments.
Trent has about 6,400 undergraduate students, now boasts a School of Education, a Nursing programme, and a Forensic Science program. The university is divided into a series of colleges: Champlain, Lady Eaton, Catharine Parr Traill, Otonabee, Peter Gzowski and Julian Blackburn College (part-time students). With the exception of Julian Blackburn, each college has its own residence, dining room, student government, Junior and Senior Common Rooms, academic offices, lecture halls, pub, and seminar rooms.
The campus of Trent is approximately 5.8 square kilometres, over half of which is a part of Trent's Nature Areas, a wild-life preserve. This is the second largest univeristy campus in terms of area in Canada, and it was originally donated by General Electric which owns a factory in Peterborough.
Roberta Bondar is currently the chancellor of Trent, and its president is Bonnie Patterson. Since Patterson's was made president of the university in 2000, students in the Trent newspaper Arthur (http://www.trentarthur.info/) publish regularly articles about how their interests are ignored by Patterson’s administration. Through this newspaper, students on campus continue to be highly critical of this top down, non-collective and undemocratic business model where the student opinion is ignored. Alumni James Motluk & Mark Wright filmed a documentary titled Whose University is it? that discussed how in 2001, Patterson essentially ignored senate (that represents the students), effectivuly undermining its legitimacy; so all decisions since then have been made behind closed doors. Students have resisted Patterson’s business model and will continue to do so.
If you want more info about the history of Bonnie Patterson's actions at Trent, you might check out the trent action website: http://www.geekunity.com/trentaction/ (-->If you click on "archives" and "2001 Trent Action" - you'll probably find some useful materials.)
The university is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the Trent Excalibur.
See also List of Ontario Universities
External links
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Category:Universities in Ontario]]
