University of British Columbia Okanagan
university campus in Kelowna, Canada
The University of British Columbia Okanagan (also known as UBC Okanagan or UBCO) is a campus of the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
This campus is the research and innovation hub in the province's southern interior, in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley and home to over 11,913 undergraduate and graduate students. UBC Okanagan has 62 undergraduate programs and 19 graduate programs.
History
Okanagan University College
The current site of UBC Okanagan was initially used by Okanagan University College (OUC), which was founded in 1989 (in principle) as a part of a plan by the government to improve access to post-secondary education in the Southern Interior of British Columbia. Initially, degrees were awarded in partnership with other universities, but by 1995, the university college began granting degrees in its name. In the late 1990s, OUC started lobbying efforts to gain full university status.
University of British Columbia
In December 2002, the British Columbia Progress Board submitted a report to the provincial government, recognizing the need to expand post-secondary education in the Okanagan. The board, chaired by the University of British Columbia president Martha Piper, recommended that the province extend "the mandate of an existing provincial University to Kelowna".
In March 2004, British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell and UBC president Martha Piper held a press conference, announcing that OUC would be dissolved. OUC's university operations would be consolidated at its North Kelowna Campus and would come under the University of British Columbia.
The public source identifies “University of British Columbia Okanagan” as university campus in Kelowna, Canada. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around University, British and Columbia.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3551709. VIAF identifies the subject as 133650408. The Library of Congress control number is no2009137007. Authority coordinates are 49.940, -119.396. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1995, 2002 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “University of British Columbia Okanagan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.