By: Mohamed Mahoud

McMaster University’s welcoming community, rich history and reputation are all factors that make it a nationally and globally renowned school. But why is McMaster, our home away from home, so far away from where most of us come from?

Many Mac students leave their home towns and either commute or move to Hamilton to attend.

This becomes a challenge for both students and their families, as making an adjustment in a new city is required.

However, this familiarity process could become easier for both students and their families if McMaster offered more variety in campus locations.

This would not only make McMaster a school that students want to attend, but one that they realistically and logistically can attend. In addition, it would strengthen McMaster’s reputation nationally.

One institution that has followed this style of expansion is the University of Toronto. Though some would argue that U of T’s campuses lessen the sense of community for students who attend any of the affiliate campuses, I would argue that this merely creates closer communities based on campus location.

This becomes a challenge for both students and their families, as making an adjustment in a new city is required.

McMaster’s relatively small campus in comparison to other universities is a part of what helps create a sense of close community for students.

This would not be taken away with more campuses, but would be multiplied and more accessible to students from different cities.

In addition, this would help to create more opportunities for prospective graduate students and research opportunities with increased resources and facilities.

McMaster is reputably a research-driven school and receives funding that is specifically for research. This would increase the input and output of McMaster research by creating more opportunities for students who are interested in pursuing graduate and post-graduate studies with McMaster.

Consequently, expanding McMaster’s campus in different locations would also create more co-op opportunities for students who are looking for co-op opportunities within McMaster.

As an engineering student, this would be beneficial for me as it would mean that I wouldn’t have to commute to places like Guelph for co-op and would be able to stay with my family.

Since I already commute to campus from Mississauga, campus expansion could make commuting easier for me in terms of my commute time. This would also help take off some stress for finding co-op opportunities if McMaster offers more co-op opportunities with expansion.

Campus expansion would help create a greater sense of community for certain faculties if the McMaster affiliated campuses were to be faculty-based. This would cater to the needs of specific faculties and make networking within one’s discipline more accessible and easier to achieve.

For smaller faculties, this would be beneficial as it would work to break the hierarchy of faculty representation, where each faculty can have an increased representation in different campuses and more opportunities for community-based events and networking.

In addition, this would make events like welcome week more productive, where students can get to know other students in their faculty a lot quicker than they would by have one welcome week for one campus.

Expansion would not only make student’s lives easier in several ways, but would also enhance McMaster’s reputation as research-driven school that students want to attend.

It would make the logistics of being able to be a McMaster student more attainable and would help strengthen each faculty in its own ways.

Campus expansion for McMaster would help build McMaster as a university and the students that make McMaster what is notable for today.

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