The University of Manitoba’s Warren Centre for Actuarial Studies and Research turns 100 years old this year.

This fact will be celebrated at the ARC 2012 conference, which runs from August 1 till August 4 in University Centre on the Fort Garry Campus.

The University of Manitoba’s actuarial program, one of the oldest and most successful in North America, is also among the first programs to earn accreditation from the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA).

In September 1912, the Department of Mathematics and Astronomy introduced a half course called Finite Differences, taught by Lloyd Warren who went on to become the first head of the Department of Actuarial Science when it was created in 1937, and who now is immortalized by having the Warren Centre for Actuarial Studies and Research, and Warren Chair, named after him. That course – Finite Differences – was followed in January 1913 by another half course, Theory of Probability and Life Contingencies. It was taught by Neil MacLean, the head of the Mathematics department.

Over the years, the program and academic structure grew and evolved. Today, students can study actuarial science through either the Faculty of Science or the Warren Centre, which offers one of few actuarial programs housed in a business school in Canada and is one of the 23 such programs in the world designated as a Centre of Actuarial Excellence by the Society of Actuaries (SOA), the largest actuarial professional body in the world.

For more information on the conference, click here.

For more information contact Judy Wilson, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 204-474-8960 (judy_wilson@umanitoba.ca).