Bachelor of Arts in Political Science

at York University - School of Continuing Studies Canada

York's Music program provides an uncommon opportunity to explore the depth and breadth of the art form through a remarkably flexible curriculum that enables students to pursue creative and scholarly work across a wide range of musical genres and traditions, tailored to each individual's unique talents and aspirations.

York's Music program is known for pioneering post-secondary studies in jazz, world, classical and digital music. Students may specialize or generalize according to their interests, developing expertise in a particular area of vocal or instrumental performance or composition, or working in a variety of musical practices and cultural forms. Options include solo, small and large ensemble performance; composition and arranging; education and community arts development; ethnomusicology; and the growing field of musoc media production for cinema, gaming and motion media.

All first-year Music students enter the BFA program. After first year, students whose interests centre on music history, criticism and scholarly research may choose to move to the BA program.

Program Highlights
Courses and workshops in popular music and in non-western performance traditions, such as South Indian, Chinese orchestra, Indonesian gamelan, Caribbean, West African drumming and Celtic Canadian, are a regular feature of the program.

Performance Opportunities
Presenting more than 100 student and faculty conerts a year, as well as master classes with renowned Canadian and international artists, the Department of Music offers countless opportunities to perform and collaborate. In addition to the many student-led ensembles, students can be part of numerous formal ensembles, including:

• Symphony Orchestra
• Jazz Orchestra and Choirs
• West African Drums
• Concert and Chamber Choirs
• Celtic Canadian Folk Ensemble
• New Music Ensemble
• Chinese Classical Ensemble
• Gospel Choir
• Wind Symphony
• Escola de Samba
• Rhythm & Blues Ensemble
• Chamber Strings

Crime, criminality, and criminal justice are central concerns in contemporary Canadian society. In politics, law, policy and popular culture, the problem of crime and what to do about it command increasing attention and interest. The Criminology program will provide you with an exceptional opportunity to pursue study in this evolving and expanding field. You will explore the ways in which concepts of crime, criminality and criminal justice have developed over time. You will also investigate how crime is understood legally, politically, economically and culturally.

The program’s interdisciplinary approach is reflected in complementary relationships with a number of other academic disciplines including anthropology, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, socio-legal studies, and sociology. Students are able to choose courses from these disciplines as well as from the core program courses, each of which draws from a range of disciplines and is devoted to making connections between different areas of study.

Note: Criminology is not a pre-law preparatory program.

The Criminology program will focus on the analysis of:

• Crime
• Criminality
• Processes of criminalization and social control
• Organized crime
• Systems of justice
• Criminal justice systems

Civil engineering is a driving engine of economic growth. From soaring skyscrapers and breathtaking bridges to innovative transportation systems and next-generation clean water technologies – the scope and impact of Civil Engineering is unparalleled. Whether it is designing roads, bridges & tunnels or making people safer by creating earthquake proof buildings, civil engineers have a wide variety of skills that make the world safer and more efficient.

What You’ll Learn
Civil Engineering students at Lassonde learn about structural and foundation design, transportation systems planning and design, water resources management, wastewater treatment, and environmental impact assessment. In addition, our graduates receive training in new emerging areas, such as innovative materials and construction technologies, infrastructure rehabilitation, computer-aided simulations, sustainability, natural hazards, and climate-change-driven engineering. 

Students have the opportunity to choose from a wide range of technical electives in Civil Engineering: 

• Structural 
• Geotechnical 
• Hydrotechnical 
• Transportation 
• Environmental 

Professional experience through co-op option after second year can give you an early start towards becoming a licensed Professional Engineer.

The History program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies explores historical events, people and places to help you gain a fuller understanding of, and appreciation for, the role and importance of history and how it impacts current events. Our professors have won university-wide, provincial and national teaching awards. Because of our size, our roster includes many and varied courses taught by experts in their fields.

Choose from courses covering Canadian, African and European history and explore themes such as the immigrant experience in Canada, the Holocaust and global migration.
In addition to courses in social, economic and political history, we offer subjects like:

• Native History
• Black History
• Histories of gender and sexualities
• History and film

Some of our best students go on to MA and PhD programs in Canada or abroad. In conjunction with York's programs in education, many of our graduates become teachers. The study of history teaches many skills necessary to succeed in today's world: critical thinking; research; assembling and analyzing information; and effective oral and written communication. Knowledge of history deepens your understanding of both the past and the present.

• We offer courses covering an almost global geography and ranging in time from antiquity to the fall of Communism.
• Our professors have published books on topics as varied as Halloween, love and death in Renaissance Italy, the world of voyageurs, Canadian marijuana policy and modern Iraq.
• We have 37 full-time professors providing creative, dynamic and innovative teaching. They include one Canada Research Chair, two Distinguished Research Professors, three Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and one member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the RSC.

York's Biophysics program draws on the long-established strengths of our Biology and Physics programs, with uniquely interdisciplinary courses highlighting their interfaces.

Biophysics is an exciting discipline at the intersection between physics and biology. It is an interdisciplinary field in which the laws, methods and techniques of physics are applied to biological processes and organisms. Biophysics applies the knowledge of physics to explain biological questions, such as the transmission of nervous impulses or muscle control.

For example, the DNA of salmon has been found to improve the performance of light emitting diodes, and areas of nanotechnology are founded upon the unique mechanical and electrical properties of DNA. Biophysicists study organisms at all levels of biological organization from the macroscopic (e.g. movement, muscle contractions, breathing) to the microscopic (e.g. cell division, molecular motors, energy generation and conversion, cellular reactions to physical stimuli).

Unique to the program is a scope sufficiently broad to expose you to knowledge and techniques applicable not only to humans but also to plants and animals, providing a solid background for positions in the environmental and agricultural sectors.

• York offers the opportunity to work side-by-side with professors through the more than 40 summer research and work-study programs offered each year.

Biophysics is an exciting interdisciplinary frontier of science in which the principles and techniques of physics are used to study living things and how they work. For instance, biophysicists have applied laser physics to map cells in three dimensions and reveal bacteria in drinking water, and have developed or improved techniques for analyzing organisms such as EM (Electron Microscopy), CT (Computer-aided Tomography), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and X-ray crystallography. Studies of biological systems can also find applications to problems in physics. For example, the DNA of salmon has been found to improve the performance of light emitting diodes, and areas of nanotechnology are founded upon the unique mechanical and electrical properties of DNA. Biophysicists study organisms at all levels of biological organization from the macroscopic (e.g. movement, muscle contractions, breathing) to the microscopic (e.g. cell division, molecular motors, energy generation and conversion, cellular reactions to physical stimuli).

York’s Biophysics program is strong in both physics and biology, with uniquely interdisciplinary courses highlighting their interfaces. The program has a scope sufficiently broad to expose students to knowledge and techniques applicable not only to humans but to all of the kingdoms of life. Students acquire a theoretical and practical understanding of biology, physics, and supporting fields through both lecture- and lab-based courses.

The School of Kinesiology & Health Science at York University is an integrated unit which offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs and is responsible for co-curricular (practica) and service programming in Athletics & Recreation for all students of the University.

Kinesiology & Health Science is the study of human movement and the relationship between physical activity and health. Most students enter the Kinesiology and Health Science Program because they have a keen interest in physical activity and health and plan to work in an applied health or education field.

York has one of the largest course offerings in Kinesiology in Canada, including more than 50 professionally focused practicum courses that let you apply your studies to everything from game strategy and injury assessment to event management.

When you commit your stories to paper you enter the realm of creative writing. Your portfolio of writing may take many forms — novels, short stories, plays and screenplays, interactive stories, hypertext documents to name a few — and involve elements that are fictional or imaginative.

The program emphasizes literary writing rather than formula writing, and aims to introduce you to the forms and styles of writing which authors, past and present, have created and explored in their works. It will expose you to the history of formal experimentation and growth in particular genres.

As you advance, you'll be encouraged to explore specialized study in one or two genres such as fiction, poetry and playwriting.
Important eligibility information: This program is intended for students with a year of undergraduate studies and is not for direct entry from high school. Students may apply after completing their first 48 credits by presenting a portfolio containing work in both poetry and prose fiction as evidence of writing experience.

Highlights of the creative writing program:

• Many of the graduates of York's Creative Writing program are writers: of poetry, novels, short stories, plays, TV shows, screenplays, and criticism.
• Among them have been winners or finalists for major awards: Canadian Authors Association awards, the CBC Literary Prizes, the Commonwealth Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Pat Lowther Award in poetry, the National Magazine Awards, the Bronwen Wallace Award for Canada’s best emerging writer, the Thomas Morton Prize, and others. Recent graduates are publishing in journals and are active in the literary community, some starting presses and magazines.
• Learn more about writing by attending the "Creative Writing Readers Series," which provides an opportunity for you to meet and hear contemporary Canadian writers read or perform their own prose or poetry.
• The Creative Writing Faculty awards acknowledge the achievements of writers in the program in poetry and fiction.

To see health in its social context is to look beyond the limits of medicine as we know it.
York’s Health and Society program is an interdisciplinary program bridging critical heath studies, humanities (history, creative writing), and the social sciences (indigenous studies, anthropology, sociology) to consider the social, cultural, political, historical and economic forces that shape health, well-being, and illness in both the Global North (Canada, US, EU, and the UK) and Global South (including nations like Peru, Kenya, Nepal, and many more).

This exciting and innovative program explores a wide range of influences including social media, art and aesthetics, cultural values, capitalist networks, and political ideologies as they shape everyday health and healing. In this program students will consider the scientific controversies surrounding mammograms, female circumcision, vaping, and supervised injection sites; the barriers in providing equitable health care delivery in resource poor and resource developed communities; and structural forces that contribute to poor health like environmental racism (Alberta’s oil sands, Dakota Access Pipeline), the contemporary effects of colonial legislation (like the Indian Act), and exclusionary practices and policies in health care development and delivery.

Biology was the pioneer science at York, offering the first undergraduate and graduate programs in the 1960s.
Biology studies living things and the discipline defines a living creature, technically called a living "organism", as one that has a metabolism and reproduces. Biologists study living organisms from many different angles, including behaviour, evolution and ecology as well as cell and molecular biology and genetics. They study all different kinds of species from plants to insects, viruses to humans. Biology can also be combined with other fields. For example, biochemistry, biophysics, biotechnology and biopsychology are all important fields related to biology.

Biologists can be found working everywhere — on and off the planet:

• In a variety of environments to investigate ecosystems;
• In the laboratory to examine how organisms work;
• In the microscopic world to explore cells and the submicroscopic to explore molecules in cells;
• In space to study the effect of space travel on organisms;
• Back in time to investigate the history of life.

The Biology program, York’s longest-established scientific program, is home to internationally recognized teaching and research faculty. It offers you a diversity of courses from across the discipline, providing you with the flexibility to choose courses from many different areas or to specialize in a particular field of life science. In your upper years, you can choose to specialize in such areas as:

• Biotechnology
• Biochemistry
• Biomedical Science
• Biophysics
• Environmental Biology

Informed global citizens understand the history behind current policies or media headlines. How do you support fair trade? How to overcome the North-South divide? This program will challenge you to analyze colonialism and the developing world, the gap between rich and poor nations and the social, cultural, economic and political elements of international development case studies.

York's International Development Studies program will help you develop a deep and sophisticated understanding of the dimensions of world poverty, its causes and the processes of development aimed at eliminating poverty by promoting human fulfillment and achievement.

You will emerge from the program with a thorough grounding in the history, debates, dimensions, institutional approaches and critiques of the field, but also able to read World Bank documents, talk the institutional language of development professionals and know how to put together and implement a development research or delivery proposal.

• Participate in the events and workshops offered by York's International Secretariat for Human Development and Democratic Governance.
• Complement your study with overseas internships, volunteer positions or study abroad programs to develop awareness and respect for diverse cultures and to become familiar with the dynamics of poverty and development.
• Join the International Development Studies Student Association to develop and support the advancement of international development.