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Thompson Rivers University is a university located in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. The enabling legislation is the Thompson Rivers University Act.[4] While the main campus is located in Kamloops, there is a second campus in Williams Lake and the university's Open Learning Division distance learning service maintains an examination and resource facility in downtown Vancouver. Wally Oppal is the Chancellor of TRU.
History
Founded in 1970, TRU was initially a community college known as Cariboo College, with government funding and support.
Five community colleges were granted authority to offer baccalaureate degrees following a 1988 government initiative designed to increase access to degree programs in British Columbia. These five institutions—Fraser Valley, Kwantlen, Malaspina, Cariboo, and Okanagan—were renamed university colleges. Initially, they offered degrees under the aegis of one or more of the three provincial universities. In 1995, they were awarded the authority to offer academic degrees and college diplomas in their own right.
Also in 1995, the province of British Columbia enacted legislation changing the institution's name to University College of the Cariboo. In 1998 the institution began offering its first undergraduate degrees. The Bachelor of Natural Resource Sciences (NRSC) was the first degree offered by the University College of the Cariboo.
Thompson Rivers University was established by the Thompson Rivers University Act, and the college was renamed effective April 1, 2005. From that point forward, the institution became a full degree-granting university. As part of the agreement with the province, all courses and programs administered by the former British Columbia Open University (BCOU) became part of the new university under the Open Learning Division. On July 1, 2007, all TRU, Open Learning (TRU-OL) operations relocated from Burnaby to the BC Centre for Open Learning building, which is located on the Kamloops campus.
The logo of Thompson Rivers University is a combined shield and logotype. The shield is composed of a sunrise representative of the Kamloops region, which averages over 2,000 hours of sunshine annually, and of the rising sun of enlightenment traditionally associated with higher education. The mountains in the shield represent the terrain of the region, which is located between the Coastal and Monashee ranges. The lines flowing from the mountains symbolize the meeting of the North and South Thompson Rivers at Kamloops. These lines also form a reference to the joining of UCC and BC Open Learning to become Thompson Rivers University. The colours, sage green and royal blue, reflect both the natural surroundings of the area and the boldness aspired to by the institution.
In 2010, while celebrating the school's 40th anniversary, the school had its 40,000th graduate—Josephine Gambaretto