Bachelor of Public Administration

at York University - School of Continuing Studies Canada

Graduates of the ITEC program are uniquely positioned to plan, design, build and administer information systems.

Information technology deals with information and its use in organizations and society. York's Information Technology (ITEC) programs provide you with the educational background to pursue an exciting career in the application of computers to a variety of tasks faced by organizations today.

Unlike traditional computer science and engineering programs, which focus on developing broad computing skills, ITEC focuses on applications of software and information technologies and how they can be systematically designed and developed to meet critical business and organizational problems.
 
This way, ITEC prepares you to become a versatile Information Technology professional who possesses a strongly developed intuition about business, organizational and societal needs, and combines it with robust technical and methodological skills to analyze, design, implement, customize and manage information technologies to fulfil those needs. 

Bachelor of Commerce – Information Technology

The BCom - ITEC ensures that in addition to essential technical and methodological skills, graduates have a deeper and broader understanding of business and commerce. Thus, courses on accounting, marketing, organization behaviour, enterprise resource planning and strategy are added to the list of courses. 

Students in our BCom - ITEC program will pursue specializations in:

• Business Systems Analysis: will prepare you for a career as an information technology analyst, systems analyst or information technology consultant.
• E-Commerce Development: gives you the technical knowledge required for the design and development of consumer and business-to-business electronic commerce systems.
• Information Technology Auditing & Assurance: responds to the growing demand for information system audit, control and security professionals. This stream was developed in close consultation with the Information Systems Audit and Control Association and will be of interest to students seeking the certified Information Systems Auditor designation.

4 years honours option also avilable for this program. For more information please visit program page.

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 study of English literature explores literary history for its relation to current culture, re-thinks the dynamics of the book as a visual medium and examines the fundamental changes to knowledge and language created within our gendered, post-colonial world.

We offer a full range of English literature courses from the medieval period to the present, with particular strengths in contemporary poetry, popular literature, Canadian, American, African, South Asia and Caribbean literatures. The program invites you to explore some of the world's greatest literary works while developing critical thinking, reading and writing skills. You can choose from courses in:

• Poetry
• Drama
• Fiction
• Satire
• Folklore
• Literary criticism
• Critical theory
• Gender studies
• Stylistics and poetics
• Comics and cartoons
• Science fiction
• Children's literature
• Travel writing

The English Department is the first and best place for considered and disciplined responses to the discourse and images that are shaped by the constantly changing technologies of a word-based world, and it is through the study of English literature that the critical skills necessary for understanding the past and the present are acquired.

Our goal is to provide you with a useful knowledge of literary works, both as art forms and as documents of human behaviour. By studying English literature, you will gain a vision of humanity as expressed in verbal art that crosses boundaries of time and place. Thanks to our location in the heart of the Greater Toronto Area, you can take advantage of the city's wide range of literary events including the Harbourfront Reading Series and Word on the Street.

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

Political Science encompasses not only the actions of governments, political parties and the courts, but also political movements in society and in the power relations of everyday life.

Choose from a rich and diverse range of courses that allow you to focus on a number of topics such as:

• Global politics
• Political economy and political power
• Development and inequality in the Third World
• Social justice
• Ethics
• Law and democracy
• Violence and security

This breadth of choice will help you to gain a comprehensive understanding of critical issues facing our world and the political context in which they exist while acquiring in-demand analytical and communications skills.

• You will learn to conceptualize and to think critically about crucial dimensions of political life, both values and processes, especially those linked to such issues as the uses and abuses of power; the articulation of rights and responsibilities; and the intersections of community and nation-state with more globally-defined realities.
• Our first-year classes are taught by our most distinguished scholars who not only cover the essentials, but also design the courses with flair and expertise.
• Our Political Science professors are internationally known. Professor Leo Pantich is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Professor Leah Voskos is the Canada Research Chair in Feminist Political Economy.
• We are well known in many areas including Canadian Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Theory and Women and Politics

Master a professional digital and content marketing skill set and gain the expertise and confidence to make data-driven marketing decisions that show results.

Why take our Digital and Content Marketing program?
No matter where in the world you work, there are companies trying to reach the right audience with their marketing message. Innovations in digital marketing and content marketing have made it possible to serve your content to just about any target audience you can dream of, with international reach and real results. In this program, you’ll learn to be the person behind the message and develop the expertise to lead marketing and business objectives .

What you will learn
This eight-course program starts from the basics, giving you a solid foundation in core marketing and business concepts before moving on to master advanced topics in digital and content marketing. In eight months of full-time study, you’ll earn a comprehensive education in core areas, including, web analytics, email marketing, content marketing strategy, editorial planning, copywriting and consumer research.

You’ll also develop technical competencies in user data and segmentation, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) communications and PPC (Pay per click) advertising.

Program Benefits
Created in collaboration with industry leaders, this accelerated certificate gives you the opportunity to work on assignments that are relevant to real-world job requirements, practice key cross-functional skills needed to excel as a digital marketing professional and graduate with a portfolio of project work. Through our student-cohort delivery model, you will advance through this program with the same peer group, allowing you to form connections with a community of marketing professionals.

Urban Studies at York stresses the importance of fieldwork when studying the social and spatial fabric of cities.

The city is among the most fundamental human institutions. Across history, cities have been sites of basic innovation in economic, political and cultural life — centres of trade, seats of empire and the locale of scientific, social and artistic creativity. Cities retain these roles today and are the home of a growing majority of the world’s population who increasingly live in large metropolitan regions of several million people. Often, as in many Canadian cities, these urban regions are marked by complex social diversity, striking contrasts of wealth and poverty and a challenging array of planning and environmental dilemmas.

Urban Studies is the attempt to understand cities and city life — how they function, the current and future concerns of their residents. This encompasses the political institutions, economic and social relations, physical landscapes and cultural frameworks that constitute the city.

As a student in Urban Studies, you will focus on cities as distinctive entities and explore the meaning and function of cities in the larger society. You'll be taking courses from a broad range of fields including:

• History
• Environmental studies
• Geography
• Anthropology
• Political science
• Sociology
• Psychology.

You will also examine the processes that produce certain patterns of human settlement and chart the changing relationships among areas shaped by urbanization, such as metropolis and countryside, city and suburb, municipality and region.

Information technology deals with information and its use in organizations and society. York's Information Technology (ITEC) programs provide you with the educational background to pursue an exciting career in the application of computers to a variety of tasks faced by organizations today.

Unlike traditional computer science and engineering programs, which focus on developing broad computing skills, ITEC focuses on applications of software and information technologies and how they can be systematically designed and developed to meet critical business and organizational problems.
 
This way, ITEC prepares you to become a versatile Information Technology professional who possesses a strongly developed intuition about business, organizational and societal needs, and combines it with robust technical and methodological skills to analyze, design, implement, customize and manage information technologies to fulfil those needs. 

The following Bachelor programs are offered by ITEC:

• Bachelor of Arts – Information Technology, with a strong technical orientation.
• Bachelor of Commerce – Information Technology, which adds more business depth.

Bachelor of Arts – Information Technology
The BA in Information Technology aims at offering its students the necessary technical skills for developing and managing IT solutions for organizations, while also learning how to systematically organize such development and management efforts. 

Through courses in computer programming, database systems, data analytics, user interfaces and web development, you will learn how to analyze, design, develop and maintain information systems. In parallel, courses such as systems analysis and design, IT project management, requirements management, and IT risk management, will teach you how professionals work together to bring information systems to life in order to fulfil complex business needs. 

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.

Solutions for 21st-century challenges involve complex systems that no single discipline can fully address. Mathematical Biology, a program in the field of Applied Mathematics, aims to represent biological processes using a variety of mathematical tools and techniques. Mathematical modelling has direct impact in areas such as disease prevention, the development of ecosystems and waste management. York offers Canada’s only degree in Mathematical Biology, and as a fourth-year student, you will have the opportunity to acquire real-life problem-solving skills in a required research project. Experience directly the intersection of math and the life sciences, as well as the role it plays in our everyday concerns. As a program graduate, you will leave with the tools and knowledge allowing you to help solve the problems of modern life.