The Physical Activity Wellness Centre is now open on campus. The sustainably designed 17,000-square-metre facility houses social areas, a double-decker fitness centre and sports research space. It also houses a two-storey climbing wall that, at up to 4.5 metres high, ranks among the tallest in Canada. A $10M donation from Dick, '74 BDes, '75 LLB, and Carol Wilson, '74 BEd, helped fund the Wilson Climbing Centre and the Hanson Fitness and Lifestyle Centre, named for Carol's father.
Alumni can access the new facility with their ONEcard.
Beginners Welcome! Discover the 5 Reasons Not to Fear a Climbing Wall.
DiscoverE, delivered by students in the Faculty of Engineering, has won a record third Google Roots in Science and Engineering Award. The group runs classroom workshops, clubs, events and camps for more than 26,000 youth every year. This year's $25,000 award will go toward creating DiscoverE's second massive open online course, introducing students to Java and teaching them to program apps.
U of A teams netted five national championships this season. The Bears volleyball and hockey teams and the men's and women's curling teams were champs in Canadian Interuniversity Sport. The Bears and Pandas tennis team won the national title in non-CIS play. The U of A has won at least one championship per year for the past 21 years.
A swath of U of A land in southern Alberta will be forever conserved in its current state with no future development allowed. The university signed an agreement with Western Sky Land Trust to ensure the 4,856-hectare Rangeland Research Institute-Mattheis Ranch near Brooks, Alta., remains an intact living research lab. The ranch, donated to the university in 2010 by alumni Edwin, '57 BSc(PetEng), and Ruth Mattheis, '58 BA, is home to a diverse ecosystem and about 30 at-risk species.
The U of A will lead a national network for glycomics research, the study of carbohydrates, or sugars, in biological systems. The Alberta Glycomics Centre at the U of A has been chosen to host the Canadian Glycomics Network, or GlycoNet, a federally funded program that unites 60 researchers from nearly two dozen post-secondary institutions with industry, government and international partners. GlycoNet is focusing on five key areas of research: chronic disease, diabetes and obesity, rare genetic disease, antimicrobials and therapeutic proteins and vaccines.
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