The University of Waterloo is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario. The main campus is on 404 hectares (1,000 acres) of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and ten faculty-based schools. The university also operates three satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges. Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada. The 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. The University operates the largest post-secondary co-operative education program in the world, with over 17,000 undergraduate students in over 140 co-operative education programs.
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.
