Bachelor of Environmental Studies (BES) - Honours

at York University - School of Continuing Studies Canada

Join the first and only technical blockchain certificate delivered by a Canadian university. Create real-world blockchain solutions as you build upon your existing knowledge and prepare to confidently launch your career.

What is Blockchain Development?
Blockchain is decentralized, transparent, and mostly unalterable. It improves data integrity through using an entire network of computers to record and validate transactions. This technology became popular within commerce, but its potential is being realized across numerous industries, including supply chain management, healthcare, finance, and public administration, specifically with electronic voting systems.

What you will learn
You’ll learn to go beyond understanding cryptography and data structures, by gaining the confidence to advise organizations on how blockchain can offer significant business value and knowing when and when not to implement the technology. You’ll develop the knowledge and competencies to be strategic about implementing blockchain technologies from concept to deployment at your organization. Aside from critical technical skills, you will build and practice foundational cross-functional skills like complex problem solving, business acumen, and social perceptiveness.

Program Benefits
Created in collaboration with industry executives, this full-time 9-course program allows you to create real-world blockchain solutions as you collaborate with like-minded peers. The program concludes with a unique capstone course, allowing you to further demonstrate your knowledge and graduate with a diverse portfolio of work. After completing the program, you’ll be prepared for real blockchain job functions, helping you secure your next career opportunity and greater success.

This program is only open to students entering their first year of university.

If you have previously studied at university or college and are expecting to receive transfer credit, you must declare a major when you apply for admission.

An undecided or undeclared major enables you to begin your first year of studies without having to select a program in which to major. In this way you can discover your interests and strengths by taking courses from a variety of disciplines prior to declaring a specific major.

While exploring different areas, you may be surprised that you have an interest in something you'd never have studied otherwise. You'll have the chance to meet other students with many different ideas and interests to spark your imagination. When you do make the ultimate decision about what to major in, you'll know that the choice is your own.

Computer science blends theoretical knowledge and practical skills to explore intriguing topics –computer systems that mimic human vision or helping design pharmaceutical drugs. Learn the theoretical limitations of computing and methodologies that lead to efficient, accurate computing.

What You’ll Learn
We offer BA and BSc degrees – both providing you with the same computer science and math expertise. In the BA program, you’ll complement your studies with courses from the Liberal Arts (e.g., humanities, social sciences). In the BSc program, the complementary courses will be in the sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics). A degree Minor or Double major will allow you to just sample or deeply explore another discipline.

You may also choose one of our three International Honours degrees – iBA, iBSc or the Dual Specialized degree. In the iBA or iBSc degree, you will add a study abroad component to your learning, with culture and language courses of your exchange destination. The International Dual degree leads to two degrees, one from York and one from the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University in Germany while completion of your undergraduate thesis at the University of Crete in Greece!

After the third year of your Honours degree, you can take part in our internship program to gain valuable professional experience.

Computer science blends theoretical knowledge and practical skills to explore intriguing topics –computer systems that mimic human vision or helping design pharmaceutical drugs. Learn the theoretical limitations of computing and methodologies that lead to efficient, accurate computing.

What You’ll Learn

We offer BA and BSc degrees – both providing you with the same computer science and math expertise. In the BA program, you’ll complement your studies with courses from the Liberal Arts (e.g., humanities, social sciences). In the BSc program, the complementary courses will be in the sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics). A degree Minor or Double major will allow you to just sample or deeply explore another discipline.

You may also choose one of our three International Honours degrees – iBA, iBSc or the Dual Specialized degree. In the iBA or iBSc degree, you will add a study abroad component to your learning, with culture and language courses of your exchange destination. The International Dual degree leads to two degrees, one from York and one from the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University in Germany while completion of your undergraduate thesis at the University of Crete in Greece!

After the third year of your Honours degree, you can take part in our internship program to gain valuable professional experience.

Some Courses You’ll Take

• Data Structures
• Software Design
• Communication Networks
• Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming
• Database Systems
• Building E-Commerce Systems
• Data Mining
• User Interfaces

Our program encompasses subject areas that are exceptionally diverse while allowing you to design a custom made program suited to your interests.

This cross-disciplinary Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies program encompasses subject areas that are exceptionally diverse. In addition to Judaism as a religion, Jewish Studies explores the texts, histories, cultures, sociologies, languages and fine arts of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present.

• Study the aspects within the context of the many western and non-western civilizations in which Jewish people have lived.
• Examine Jewish interactions with non-Jewish people over the ages, evolving attitudes toward and images of Jewish people within a variety of non-Jewish cultures and the history of anti-Semitism, including the Holocaust.
• Explores the Jewish experience with a view to understanding the human situation in its diversity and complexity.

Computer engineering forms the basis of the modern world. Self-driving cars, robotics, mobile devices, electronic commerce, wireless communications, and other advances are all built by Computer Engineers. Computer engineers gain deep knowledge about hardware and software design, as well as are uniquely qualified to work on computer systems involving these aspects. They design and implement solutions to the ever increasing range of engineering problems.

What You’ll Learn
As a Computer Engineering student you will gain deep knowledge about hardware and software design, as well be uniquely qualified to work on computer systems. You will take courses in computation, system design and other specialized areas, including robotics and virtual reality. This theoretical knowledge is balanced with hands-on experience. Lassonde Computer Engineering students have access to our state-of-the-art facilities –Digital Systems Lab and Robotics Lab. 

After second year, the co-op program can provide you with valuable experience, giving you an early start to becoming a licensed Professional Engineer.

In Classical Studies, we explore the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome, and their enormous impact on the world as we know it today. Some might think that these languages and cultures are dead, but the Greeks and Romans were concerned with many issues that remain fascinating, relevant and important today - love, death, fate, the individual and society, religion, justice, law and so on. Their works form the basis for much of what we know and understand about the world around us today.

The program will introduce you to the richness of thought and expression of the cultures that have shaped the Western intellectual tradition. You'll study the religion, politics, mythology, art, literature, history, archaeology, architecture and philosophy of Greek and Roman society.

Classical Studies is a truly interdisciplinary subject of great breadth. The program allows a broad range of choice of courses in:

• Greek and Roman languages and literature
• Greek and Roman history
• Greek and Roman philosophy
• Greek and Roman archaeology, art and architecture

Our courses will introduce you to and deepen your understanding of a range of analytical approaches, including literary, linguistic, historical, philosophical and aesthetic approaches to classical culture.
Majoring in Classical Studies is an excellent way to develop critical, analytical and logical reasoning skills. You'll learn how to make rational arguments and express them lucidly. You'll gain a thorough understanding of some of the greatest accomplishments in human thought and art.

Streams within the program include:

• Classics – This stream focuses on the ancient Greek and Latin languages.
• Classical Studies – This stream focuses more on the historical and social/cultural aspects and ancient Greece and Rome.

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.

Foster the skills of teaching and learning

Education is future-oriented — it's about development and growth even when we are studying the past. Education is giving or receiving knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgement, using inspiration, tapping into creativity, taking risks and developing emotional and intellectual resilience. In our society, education implies school and whether you teach others or are in the process of learning yourself, education focuses on knowledge and on the intellect. Through the fine art of bringing out what is latent in a person, we learn as we teach.

To foster the skills of teaching and learning, York offers several Education programs. Click on the program name below to learn more about the program.

The Bachelor of Education (BEd), Technological Education is a full-time, professional degree program held at York University's Keele campus. Graduates will be qualified to teach one of the following technological subjects at the Intermediate-Senior (grades 9 to 12) certification levels:

• Communication Technology
• Computer Technology
• Construction Technology
• Green Industries
• Hairstyling & Aesthetics
• Health Care
• Hospitality and Tourism
• Manufacturing Technology
• Technological Design
• Transportation Technology

Statistics is a field that provides the foundations and techniques to collect, analyze, and present information in an effective and efficient manner. Recent trends involve a resurgence of interest in methods for informal exploratory analysis of data. This relies increasingly on friendly computing environments supported by efficient algorithms. York's Statistics program is an exploration of the nature of measurement, chance variation, probability, uncertainty, inductive logic and inference, and combines naturally with studies in the life and social sciences.

An increasingly important aspect of modern statistics is the design of experiments and surveys — as well as analyzing the resulting data — in areas of application ranging scientific studies to the insurance industry. Statisticians use surveys to predict the patterns of behaviour of large groups based on relatively small samples.

Through its applications in almost every branch of modern professional life and research, statistics is a fast-growing discipline that provides a statistician with a variety of career opportunities. Statistics is offered as both a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science options. Why take one instead of the other? All Mathematics students (Mathematics, Applied Math, Statistics, Math for Commerce) take common first- and second-year courses. It is in the third and fourth years that the programs begin to differentiate.

For a Bachelor of Science (BSc) math degree, you will combine your math courses with other science courses such as physics, earth and atmospheric science, biology or computer science.