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About the Faculty of Arts
The McGill campus is an oasis in the heart of the business, cultural, and entertainment centres of downtown Montreal. At the centre of the Downtown campus is the McCall MacBain Arts Building, the oldest building on campus and the University’s flagship. It houses classrooms, administrative offices, and Moyse Hall, an elegant and superbly equipped theatre. For years, the front steps of the McCall MacBain Arts Building have been a favourite spot to meet and to take a respite from the rigours of coursework. In addition to the Arts Building, the Faculty of Arts is housed in 22 other buildings across campus, including historic houses and former apartment buildings across campus.
The Faculty of Arts, the faculty that lies both literally and figuratively at the heart of the University, has enjoyed steady growth since it was established in 1843 and remains by far the largest faculty at McGill. The Faculty is home to 15 departments, 22 interdisciplinary programs, the School of Religious Studies, three professional schools (the School of Information Studies, the School of Social Work, and the Max Bell School of Public Policy), four institutes and 12 centres. It has over 300 tenured or tenure-track scholars, over 8,100 undergraduates, and over 1,200 graduate students, and offers several hundred courses. Despite the numbers, the majority of classes in Arts are smaller than those offered by any other large research university in Canada. The humanities and social science disciplines that constitute the Faculty share a common endeavour: to understand the human condition in order to improve it.
The Faculty maintains bilateral exchange programs with many universities around the world and encourages students to spend a term or two studying abroad, either through an exchange program or independently. Internships have also now become an integral part of an undergraduate degree. The Faculty of Arts Internship Office (AIO) assists students who wish to pursue short-term internship opportunities before completing their studies. The Faculty of Arts stands alone nationally in the scope and extent of services its established infrastructure and comprehensive support system makes available to students before, during, and upon their return from, their internship. Each year over 200 students intern with organizations around the globe.
McGill is known throughout the world as one of Canada’s premier institutions of learning and as one of the leading research universities in the world. Professors at McGill are leaders in their fields and leaders in education and have been the recipients of numerous awards for both research and teaching. The Faculty of Arts prides itself on being immediately responsive to developments and changes within and outside academia and develop its curricula in response to these new realities.