Bachelor of Science in Physical Sciences - Honours Materials and Nanosciences (Co-op)

at University of Waterloo Canada

How does society handle inequality, poverty, and crime? How do social groups interact? How can we improve health care, criminal justice, religion, the economy, and our relationships to one another?

This is a program where you’ll wrestle with pressing questions — and develop the tools to create solutions to local and global challenges.

You’ll explore topics such as age, class, ethnicity, religion, gender, criminality, education, work, social change, and politics. And when you study Sociology at Waterloo, you’ll learn from leading experts committed to creating an outstanding classroom experience, ranked in the top 100 in the world. (Shanghai World University Rankings 2020)

As a sociologist, you’ll find career opportunities in a wide range of fields, including government, the financial sector, health, policy and research, law, academia, policing, and non-profit organizations. Want to explore them early? You can start by enrolling in the co-op stream and gaining up to two years of work experience prior to graduating.

What is co-op?
Co-op lets you explore careers and gain paid work experience while earning your university degree. What could be better than that?! As a co-op student at Waterloo, you’ll normally alternate between four months in school and four months as a full-time employee of the organization you're working for. It's an amazing way to learn to successfully interview for jobs, see how your degree relates to real-life problems, graduate with up to two years of valuable experience – and make money!

Focus on problems where resources need to be allocated effectively in complex, dynamic, and uncertain conditions.

You'll start with a solid foundation in math, including combinatorics, linear optimization, modeling, scheduling, forecasting, decision theory, and computer simulation. On top of that, you’ll add courses in economics, business, and management science, in addition to the ability to gain paid work experience through co-op.

After first year, you'll choose one of two specializations: Operations Research or Business.

When you graduate, you’ll have all kinds of career options. You might enhance scheduling for airline crews and sports games, improve production and distribution efficiency for manufacturing companies, increase service quality and efficiency in healthcare administration, or develop sophisticated tools for finance and investments.

In this exciting, highly interactive program (formerly Speech Communication), you’ll explore how our everyday forms of communication create meaning and shape our perspective of the world. This degree is unique within Canada for our experience-based study of verbal, non-verbal, visual, and digital communication practices.

You’ll learn to master interviewing skills, become adept at public speaking, and communicate effectively as a leader. You'll also study the dynamics of communication in your personal interactions, your classrooms, workspaces, in your use of online and digital spaces, and more broadly in media and public communication.

Over the course of your degree, you’ll hone your written and oral communication skills while developing expertise in teamwork, research, visual and digital literacy, and critical analysis — just the kind of skills that employers are hungry for. Enrolling in the co-op stream will provide insights into possible careers and paid work experience along the way.

What is co-op?
Co-op lets you explore careers and gain paid work experience while earning your university degree. What could be better than that?! As a co-op student at Waterloo, you’ll normally alternate between four months in school and four months as a full-time employee of the organization you're working for. It's an amazing way to learn to successfully interview for jobs, see how your degree relates to real-life problems, graduate with up to two years of valuable experience – and make money!

Explore the frontiers of the mind. Examine human behaviour from a variety of perspectives, including neuroscience, cognition, clinical, developmental, industrial/organizational, and social psychology.

Then deepen your understanding with complementary courses in other subject areas, such as legal studies, sociology, biology, and health studies.

Want to customize your program even further? Work with one of our award-winning professors to design a directed studies course around your specific interest. Or get some work experience by enrolling in the co-op stream.iversity Rankings 2020), and its alumni are treating mental illnesses, improving approaches to education, and creating more satisfying workplaces everyday.

What is co-op?
Co-op lets you explore careers and gain paid work experience while earning your university degree. What could be better than that?! As a co-op student at Waterloo, you’ll normally alternate between four months in school and four months as a full-time employee of the organization you're working for. It's an amazing way to learn to successfully interview for jobs, see how your degree relates to real-life problems, graduate with up to two years of valuable experience – and make money!

Explore earth processes as they relate to human activities to better understand the impacts of human (and natural) influences on environmental sustainability, biodiversity, and hydrology/hydrogeology.

Environmental science applies geologic knowledge to address and solve problems related to the more than seven billion humans occupying the Earth. Topics you'll learn include climate change, groundwater flow and contamination, environmental impacts of pollution, responsible extraction of earth resources, waste disposal, and human engineering of earth processes. Enjoy examining the interactions between and within the Earth's four spheres that include both living and non-living components.

Train with cutting-edge professors and the latest technologies, at Canada's most innovative university, to directly address challenges facing humanity today and future generations.   

Water Science
Investigate the unique properties of water, the distribution and movement of fresh and salt water above, on, and within the Earth, and the quality and quantity of water that humans depend upon to survive and thrive on this planet.

What is co-op?
Co-op lets you explore careers and gain paid work experience while earning your university degree. What could be better than that?! As a co-op student at Waterloo, you’ll normally alternate between four months in school and four months as a full-time employee of the organization you're working for. It's an amazing way to learn to successfully interview for jobs, see how your degree relates to real-life problems, graduate with up to two years of valuable experience – and make money!

In this one-of-a-kind program, you’ll cover all the fundamentals of a standard accounting program — plus you’ll take a deep dive into mathematics.

It’s the perfect foundation for a career as a chartered accountant or a management accountant. You’ll learn from world-recognized professors in the only professionally accredited Chartered Professional Accountancy program in Ontario that leads to a Bachelor of Mathematics (BMath) degree.

Then, you’ll put your knowledge to work during four co-op work terms, gaining valuable real-world experience that can be counted toward your CPA designation. You’ll graduate with a unique degree and ready for a high-impact career as a CPA.

What is co-op?
Co-op lets you explore careers and gain paid work experience while earning your university degree. What could be better than that?! As a co-op student at Waterloo, you’ll normally alternate between four months in school and four months as a full-time employee of the organization you're working for. It's an amazing way to learn to successfully interview for jobs, see how your degree relates to real-life problems, graduate with up to two years of valuable experience – and make money!

Learn to engineer the products we use every day. Turn fuel into energy, waste into resources, and raw material into finished products in one of the largest chemical engineering departments in Canada, and one of the top 100 in the world.

You’ll develop expertise in chemistry and materials science — plus you’ll learn the systems analysis skills to design, implement, and manage processes from start to finish.

You’ll put that knowledge to work during your six co-op terms: creating an impressive résumé, exploring different career areas, and earning money to help pay for your education.

What is co-op?
Co-op lets you explore careers and gain paid work experience while earning your university degree. What could be better than that?! As a co-op student at Waterloo, you’ll normally alternate between four months in school and four months as a full-time employee of the organization you're working for. It's an amazing way to learn to successfully interview for jobs, see how your degree relates to real-life problems, graduate with up to two years of valuable experience – and make money!

Help an Olympic hopeful recover from a torn ligament. Prevent workplace injuries by improving a company’s ergonomic standards. Give a child with cerebral palsy a better quality of life. Learn to prevent and treat movement-related illness and injury – and if you opt for the co-op stream, you can get 20 months of paid career experience along the way.

In addition to traditional science courses in biomechanics, neuroscience, and physiology, you’ll have four kinesiology-related minors and dozens of campus-wide minors to choose from. You can also include courses to prepare you for professional health programs such as medicine and physiotherapy.

How will the stock market perform next February? How much will insurance companies pay out in claims next year? With an Actuarial Science degree from Waterloo, you’ll have the answers.

In this program, you'll take courses such as the mathematics of finance, risk theory, and pension mathematics taught by professional actuaries in one of North America’s top actuarial schools.

Meanwhile, adding computer science, arts, and various math electives will give you the combination of technical and communication skills that employers are looking for.

Whether you choose the regular stream or the co-op stream, you'll graduate ready to enter a great job market with great prospects and high starting salaries.

The Honours Visual Culture academic plan focuses on the important role visual culture plays within culture and society. The academic plan is intended to be truly interdisciplinary with a focus on the history and theory of visual culture while recognizing the rapidly growing international contexts and vastly diverse cultures of spectatorship. The plan consists of a spine of five courses in visual culture, beginning with introductory courses that situate art and film within the wider context of visuality (i.e. how we see the world), followed by courses that address visual culture from a variety of disciplines and within diverse theoretical models, and culminates in an independent tutorial-style course in which students prepare a final-year thesis under the supervision of a faculty member. These courses are supplemented by at least 11 other courses that concentrate on different aspects of visual culture, chosen from more than one hundred possibilities taught in over 20 different departments and units across the university.

Students enrolled in the Honours Fine Arts – Visual Culture academic plan may wish to enhance their plan by taking a second upper-level course (VCULT 401) in their final year that is a continuation of the final-year thesis.