the need to change lives and improve life is our call to action ...
All students who enrol at the University of Guelph expect that the knowledge gained here will change their lives for the better. They are right, of course, but they may not know how much the University of Guelph has already done to improve life in Canada.
The list of Guelph contributions goes back almost 150 years to a time when the country’s agrarian society needed an injection of scientific knowledge. Our founding colleges became key players in the development of Canadian society through advances in crop production, the care of livestock and the role of rural families.
From those historical strengths, the University of Guelph has become a leader in advancing healthy animal and human systems, environmental sustainability, biodiversity, and food and water quality. Few institutions in the world have such a deep understanding of the life sciences or how our culture has impacted our concept of life. Few institutions in the world are as prepared as the University of Guelph to address the challenges facing us today.
Canada is no longer an isolated, agrarian society. And the threat of pandemics and disease, environmental degradation, food and water shortages and deteriorating societies are no longer the problems of other countries. These are global issues that affect our quality of life as surely as those of our neighbours around the world.
What we need in the world today is a way of accelerating our collective capacity for change. Educators, researchers, scholars, scientists, artists and students ― wherever we are on Earth, we need to think differently, act decisively and work together to find the solutions needed.
For the University of Guelph, this is a call to action. We believe this is our time to provide leadership. We are drawing on our historical strengths, our cross-disciplinary expertise and our desire to improve life for future generations ― in Canada and around the world.
Alastair Summerlee
President and Vice-Chancellor
The University of Guelph has answers
● inventor of DNA bar-coding for species identification
● first scientific validation of water on Mars
● 10 years of essential research in the Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being
● laboratory staff discovered melamine in the bodies of poisoned pets to solve the case of tainted pet food
● the only Canadian university named among the top 25 institutions worldwide for research impact on agricultural sciences.
