Quest University

uest University Canada is a private, secular, non-profit liberal arts and sciences university in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. It was created as "Sea to Sky University" on May 29, 2002, by the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia's passage of the Sea to Sky University Act, which had been introduced as a private member's bill by MLA Ralph Sultan. The act's aim was to create a university that would "offer a rigorous and well-rounded university education in the arts and sciences with a global focus". The university was the brainchild of David Strangway who, after his retirement as president of the University of British Columbia, had begun to explore the possibility of creating a four-year, residential, liberal arts institution in Canada. Strangway wanted to create a university "where the student-teacher ratio was better than the Canadian national average of 30 to one, and where students could get a general arts and sciences curriculum that focused not on specific disciplines, but rather how those disciplines operated within the world at large." A 240-acre (97 ha) parcel of clear-cut land was purchased in the Garibaldi Highlands neighborhood of Squamish, BC; the central 60 acres (24.3 ha) was designated as the campus, with the surrounding lands zoned for housing development. The fledgling university received grants from the J.W. McConnell Foundation, R. Howard Webster Foundation, and the Stewart and Marilyn Blusson Foundation, which enabled the university to begin construction on its campus and hire staff.[5] In October 2005, the university changed its name to Quest University Canada.