Academic Calendar 2024-2025

Mount Allison has built a reputation through the success of its students, faculty, staff, and graduates. Every year students like you come to campus from across Canada and around the world to be part of a living and learning community that fuels passions and ignites new interests.

The University offers a broad interdisciplinary knowledge base with more than 50 programs. With smaller class sizes and access to world-class faculty, students gain hands-on learning opportunities that combine practical experience, the application of learning to real-world situations, and skills development.

Along with our own award-winning faculty and resources, Mount Allison is also part of the Maple League with Acadia, Bishop's, and St. Francis Xavier Universities. The Maple League is a co-operative initiative to promote and extend common objectives of providing students with a high-quality undergraduate university education in a residential setting.

OUR MISSION

Mount Allison University is committed to the creation and dissemination of knowledge in a community of higher learning, centred on undergraduate students, in an intimate and harmonious environment. Our teaching, research, and creative enterprise are combined with extracurricular activities in a liberal education tradition that emphasizes development of the whole person. This integrated approach involves collaborative efforts among all members of the University community and leads to superior scholarship, cultural understanding and appreciation, personal and social maturation, leadership development, and informed citizenship.

WELL-ROUNDED STUDENTS IN A TIGHT-KNIT COMMUNITY

Mount Allison is an undergraduate liberal arts and science university with an enrolment of approximately 2,300 full-time students. It has preserved the character of a compact, scholarly community to foster excellence in teaching, mentoring, and student-centred research.

Students enjoy a close-knit community that is culturally diverse, gender inclusive, supportive, and welcoming with many extracurricular experiences to help you find your passion. Along with a dynamic athletics program with varsity, club, and intramural offerings, Mount Allison has 100+ student-run clubs and societies.

Mount Allison has one of the strongest records among Canadian universities of Rhodes Scholars (56 as of 2022) and enjoys a high number of external awards for both scholarships and research among its students and faculty members.

Notable alumni include Christopher Pratt, the late Mary Pratt, and the late Alex Colville; national broadcaster Ian Hanomansing; opera singer Sally Dibblee; cardiac surgeon Dr. Marc Pelletier; performance consultant and psychologist Dr. Kimberley Amirault-Ryan; Juno and ECMA award-winning singer/songwriter David Myles; and former lieutenant-governors of New Brunswick Margaret McCain, Marilyn Trenholme Counsell, and Herménégilde Chiasson, as well as former Nova Scotia lieutenant-governor John James Grant.

THE FACULTY

The University's faculty is talented and dedicated, exemplifying a strong blend of teaching and research. The vast majority of full-time faculty at Mount Allison (98%) have received their PhD (terminal degree). Eleven professors have been named National 3M Teaching Fellows, Canada's highest national teaching distinction, while at Mount Allison and two researchers have earned the Canada Research Chair designation.

Along with teaching, many faculty members also pursue research projects directly with their students, giving Mount Allison students unprecedented research experience at the undergraduate level.

AN EDUCATION SUITED TO THE 21ST CENTURY

Mount Allison offers bachelor degrees in Arts, Science, Arts and Science, Commerce, Fine Arts, and Music, as well as master degrees in Science. It also has 14 undergraduate certificate programs that are taken concurrently with a degree.

The Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees are achieved through completion of one of a specialized honours program; a major plus a minor; a double major; a joint major; or a general degree of three minors. In addition, each Arts and Science student takes at least six credits from each of four distribution areas of Arts and Letters, Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences. The University has also introduced embedded certificate programs, which offer students an additional credential within their degree program and provide an area of focus to their elective requirements.

Mount Allison is a liberal arts and sciences institution. A liberal arts and sciences education allows you to gain a broad knowledge base and combine your interests in new and surprising ways. It teaches you how to learn, think, understand, adapt, problem solve, communicate, work with people, and tackle today's and tomorrow's challenges. It is a solid foundation for any career you may choose to pursue.

A degree from Mount Allison, or a few carefully selected courses or electives as part of a Mount Allison degree, may permit admission to a professional program. Some of these programs include medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, law, education, theology, social work, audiology and speech therapy, occupational physiotherapy, optometry, architecture, and nutritional programs as well as many others. These professional programs may be accessed upon successful completion of courses or a degree from Mount Allison and in combination with other requirements as appropriate (e.g. LSAT, MCAT, GRE, etc.).

Mount Allison is also focused on providing experiential or hands-on learning opportunities — the chance to apply what you have learned in the classroom to real-world situations.

A REPUTATION FOR LEADERSHIP

For over 180 years, Mount Allison has been recognized as a leader in education. Mount Allison was the first university in the British Empire to confer a bachelor degree on a woman — Grace Annie Lockhart received a Bachelor of Science in 1875. It was also the first university in Canada to grant a Bachelor of Arts to a woman — Harriet Starr Stewart in 1882.

Mount Allison boasts the oldest university art gallery in Canada; was the first Canadian university to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Canadian Studies program; and it is a pioneer in the establishment of services for students with learning disabilities through the award-winning Meighen Centre. Mount Allison has been recognized by Maclean's annual university rankings as the top primarily undergraduate university in Canada 24 times in the past 33 years — a record unmatched by any other university. A high-calibre faculty, outstanding students, and financial stability are among the reasons why.

HISTORICAL SKETCH

Founder Charles Frederick Allison was a Sackville merchant. His grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the late 1700s, as a result of a dinner with the local tax collector. Wanting to impress him, the family set the table with their one valuable possession, a set of silver spoons. After entertaining their guest, the Allisons were informed that if they could afford silver spoons, they could afford to pay more taxes. They left Ireland shortly thereafter. The spoons are on display in the R.P. Bell Library at Mount Allison.

In June 1839, Charles Frederick Allison proposed to the Wesleyan Methodists that a school of elementary and higher learning be built. His offer to purchase a site in Sackville, to erect a suitable building for an academy, and to contribute operating funds of 100 pounds a year for 10 years was accepted. The formal opening of the Mount Allison Academy for boys took place in 1843. In 1854, a branch institution for girls opened. In July 1862, the degree-granting Mount Allison College was organized. The first two students graduated in May 1863. For nearly a century, Mount Allison functioned as three distinct, mutually enriching parts: the College proper, the Boys' Academy, and the Ladies' College.

Mount Allison has a long and proud tradition, and part of that tradition has been the ability to evolve and adapt to new and changing demands. It is very much a university of the 21st century, while remaining the direct and recognizable descendant of the first Academy of 1843.

ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CAMPUSES IN CANADA

Nestled in the heart of Sackville, NB, Mount Allison has one of the most beautiful campuses in the country.

The majority of campus buildings are clad in distinctive red and grey sandstone — much of it quarried right here in Sackville — giving students and visitors the impression of having stepped back in time. But behind the ivy-covered stone exteriors are modern and state-of-the-art facilities. In particular, the Purdy Crawford Centre for the Arts, opened in 2014, provides purpose-built space for fine arts and drama, while the Gairdner Building was completely refurbished in 2018 to create a life sciences research centre. In 2022, the McCormack gymnasium in the Athletic Centre underwent its first significant upgrades since opening in 1961 with improved ventilation, new hardwood flooring, modernized equipment and accessible bleachers. There have also been recent significant upgrades to classrooms and laboratories across campus.

One of the highlights of the 72-acre campus is Ladies' College Park, located next to the Conservatory. The park is known for its century-old pond, which serves as a skating rink in winter and as the backdrop for graduation photographs in spring and summer. The campus has an abundance of green space displaying a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers — the perfect setting for studying or meeting up with friends.

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Mount Allison University is a member of Universities Canada.