The University of Western Ontario (UWO), branded as Western University as of 2012 and commonly shortened to Western, is a public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on 455 hectares (1,120 acres) of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thames River bisecting the campus's eastern portion. The university operates twelve academic faculties and schools. It is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The university was founded on 7 March 1878 by Bishop Isaac Hellmuth of the Anglican Diocese of Huron as the Western University of London, Ontario. It incorporated Huron College, which had been founded in 1863. The first four faculties were Arts, Divinity, Law and Medicine. The university became non-denominational in 1908. Beginning in 1919, the university had affiliated with several denominational colleges. The university grew substantially in the post-World War II era, and a number of faculties and schools were added.
Western is a co-educational university, with more than 24,000 students, and over 306,000 living alumni worldwide. Notable alumni include government officials, academics, business leaders, Nobel Laureates, Rhodes Scholars, and distinguished fellows. Western's varsity teams, known as the Western Mustangs, compete in the Ontario University Athletics conference of U Sports.
The University of Western Ontario is in the city of London, Ontario, in the southwestern end of the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. Most of the campus is surrounded by residential neighbourhoods, with the Thames River bisecting the campus' eastern portion. Western Road is the university's major transportation artery, travelling north to south. The central campus, which includes most of the University's student residences and teaching facilities is approximately 170.8 hectares (422 acres).
Student residences make up the largest part of Western's building area, with approximately 31 percent of all building space allocated for residential use. Teaching and research facilities take up the second largest portion of building space, with approximately 28 percent of all building space allocated for that use. Most of these facilities are used for research, with 48 percent of all teaching and research facilities allocated for that purpose. Approximately 27 percent of all teaching and research facilities is made up of classrooms, with the remaining 24 percent made up of instructional laboratories.
The development of Western's present campus began in the 1920s. Many of the University's earliest buildings used Collegiate Gothic designs, a characteristic confirmed in Western's master building plan in 1934.[26] As the campus expanded in the late 1960s, the university abandoned earlier commitments to Collegiate Gothic designs in favour of brutalist and modernist architectural designs. In 2000, planning for Western's central campus was re-conceptualized, with the core devoted for only academic buildings. The plan saw University College Hill as the focal point, linking the lower portion of the campus with the South Valley The 2006 campus master plan called for the protection and renewed emphasis on Western's Collegiate Gothic buildings. The University's boiler room/power plant is the oldest building on the University's central campus, opening in 1922. The oldest academic buildings within the central campus is University College and the Physics and Astronomy Building. Groundbreaking for both buildings began in 1922, and were both completed in 1924. The Amit Chakma Engineering Building is the newest academic building on campus, opening in September 2018. The Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, or WIRB, is the newest building on campus and houses state-of-the art research facilities for the study of cognitive neuroscience as well as the Brain and Mind Institute, BrainsCAN, and the Rotman Institute for Philosophy.