Nova Scotia Technical College
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In the early 1900s, at the request of the province of Nova Scotia, Dr. Frederick Sexton laid the plans for the current system and roles of "Associated Universities" in engineering education in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. He also founded the Nova Scotia Technical College (NSTC), where students pursued their senior engineering and graduate years - typically the last 2-3 years of undergraduate engineering, after doing the initial 2 years at one of the associated universities. Dr. Sexton served as the first principal, and later president, of NSTC from 1907 to 1947.
Dr Frederick Sexton's wife, May Sexton was a suffragette who worked to get women included in the opportunity to have women eligible for technical education.
Circa 1980, NSTC became the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS). The provincial government forced TUNS to amalgamate with Dalhousie University in April 1997 and was called Dalhousie University Polytechnic (DalTech) until 2001.
Today, the TUNS campus is known as the Sexton Campus of Dalhousie University, with the engineering faculty now known as the Dalhousie University Faculty of Engineering and the architecture and planning faculty now known as the Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning. The computer science faculty at TUNS was swiftly merged with Dalhousie's after the 1997 amalgamation, becoming the Dalhousie University Faculty of Computer Science. Computer science moved into a new building on the Studley Campus in 1999.
In addition to the Sexton Campus, there are two buildings and a prestigious scholarship named after Dr. Sexton.
Currently the associated universities program is being reviewed. Mount Allison University has already removed itself from the program (as of 1998) and Dalhousie would like to standardize the engineering program for all 4-5 years of the undergraduate degree at its Sexton Campus, similar to the way in which engineering is being offered at the University of New Brunswick and Memorial University of Newfoundland, as well as others across Canada.