Category: Projects

A few of the Friends were treated to tour of the new Student Innovation Centre. Dean of Science, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer proudly showed us the new space that the Faculty of Science has built with planned opening in the Fall of 2018.

Further description can be read here.

Conversations will begin with the Faculty of Science to explore ways the Friends of the University of Alberta may contribute to the experience in this student space.

Getting low on power? Grab your USB cable and charge your device on a new solar-powered station. Installed on North campus, one is located by the Administration building and the other near the HUB LRT/Bus loop.

UAlberta is the first university to install these stations. The two Soofa Core units were donated by The Friends of the University of Alberta Society as a contribution to campus life and environmental sustainability.

We would like to also thank the U of A’s Facilities and Operations for retrofitting and installing the Soofa benches; their partnership with the Friends of the University helped make this project happen.

Related links:
City of Edmonton (CBC News)

The Friends produced a new brochure, just in time for the 1992 AGM. Here is the text:

While the University of Alberta is mainly financed by government funds, there I remains ample opportunity for the practical expression of interest in the University’s welfare by members of the community. To this end there exists a body through which the University’s friends may play an active role. This organization is the Friends of the University of Alberta. The Friends of the University of Alberta need not be graduates of the University, or indeed of any university. Many of the Friends are graduates of the University of Alberta, and some have been drawn from the ranks of the University’s Presidents, Chancellors, and faculty members, but many others are simply and literally its friends in the larger community. The Friends pay no regular membership fee, though an annual tax-deductible contribution is customary and gratefully received. There are no membership categories. Over the past fifty years, the Friends of the University have used these donations to support and enrich the university in a great many different ways. These include:

• bringing outstanding speakers to deliver the Henry Marshall Tory Lectures, free public lectures named after the University’s first president;
• providing small scholarships for needy students and supporting a few awards for meritorious students;
• supporting the purchase of special equipment not provided for in the University’s budget (one instance is the University Library’s purchase in 1992 of the computerized, “on-line” edition of The Oxford English Dictionary);
• financing bursaries for mature women students, in conjunction with the University Women’s Club;
• providing instruments for students in the Department of Music;
• acquiring rare books for the Special Collections Library to honor retiring professors;
• financing, in part, the creation of the large mural on the north wall of the Education Building;
• supporting the project to erect a clock tower at the centre of the University campus.

The Friends have an Annual General Meeting, which includes dinner for the members, at which members receive an account of the Friends’ activities for the past year. The Friends are governed by an Executive Committee, consisting of a Chairman, a Secretary-Treasurer, seven other members, and the University’s Chancellor and its President. We invite you to become a Friend of the University of Alberta or to renew your membership in the Friends by filling in the enclosed coupon and sending it to the Secretary-Treasurer.

Here is a link to download the original: