Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University is a public research university in Burnaby, British Columbia, with additional campuses in downtown Vancouver and Surrey. It was founded in 1965 as the province's second major university and occupies a hilltop site on Burnaby Mountain. The original concrete academic quadrangle remains the structural center of the Burnaby campus, which was planned as a complete new university rather than an offshoot of an older one.

Eight faculties organize teaching: Applied Sciences; Arts and Social Sciences; the Beedie School of Business; Communication, Art and Technology; Education; Environment; Health Sciences; and Science. Graduate strength is concentrated in computing science, criminology, communication, public policy, and the environmental and health sciences. Research units include data-intensive computing groups and institutes in international studies and in climate and earth systems.

About 35,000 students are enrolled, including several thousand at the graduate level. International students form a substantial share, with large groups from China, India, and elsewhere in Asia. Faculty number about 1,000. Alumni include athlete and activist Terry Fox, who studied on the Burnaby campus, television producer Daryl Duke, and senator Yuen Pau Woo.

Graduate degrees include research master's, professional master's, and doctorates, with thesis supervision in labs and field programs and coursework in the professional streams. SFU runs a year-round trimester calendar, so graduate students can begin and fund work in any term. Burnaby is a self-contained hilltop campus; Vancouver and Surrey place professional and urban programs in the city.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Simon Fraser University lists 26 graduate programs across 17 subjects: 19 master's programs and 6 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, computer science and chemistry. Simon Fraser University holds rank 242 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.