Letter from the Director

Hi Everyone ,

Thanks for choosing to study Engineering at Acadia! We’re looking forward to meeting you soon in person, if you haven’t been here already on a tour or open house day. I’m confident that you will enjoy both the program and the general university environment here.

I’m writing to offer a bit of information regarding registration. There have been some changes to the engineering curriculum over the past couple of years, which have resulted in the two elective courses which used to be taken by our students in the first year being moved to year two. The recommended set of year one courses is now the same for everyone, which makes your registration much easier. The university will be pre-registering all engineering students who have been offered normal admission to the program for this set of courses, which consist of:                    

Term 1		Term 2
MATH 1013 PHYS 1013 CHEM 1013 APSC 1113 APSC 1413 OR APSC 1223		MATH 1023 PHYS 1023 CHEM 1023 APSC 1133 APSC 1223 or APSC 1413 MATH 1323

This is the complete set of courses you need to complete the recommended first year, so you shouldn’t have to do anything more to complete your registration if you are following the standard program.  If you have AP credits from high school that are applicable to the engineering program (or have been admitted under some special conditions) your list of pre-registered courses might be different from this and you might have to do more to complete the registration process. In this case, it might be a good idea to contact the Engineering office for further advice.

When you first go on-line to check your registration, it will probably look like you are registered for more than 11 courses at first glance.  That's because each course has an accompanying lab and/or tutorial session, and those are listed under a separate, but related, number to the main course.

At this point, I should probably also mention that we recommend that students follow that same first year, regardless of which of the two academic programs (CAS or BASc) you have been initially admitted to. Students absolutely committed to the three year BASc program do not have to take 6 courses in the second term of the first year, but CAS students do. By pre-registering everyone for all eleven courses you will keep your options open to switch between them once classes are under way. Dropping the “extra” course at Christmas is easier than trying to add it later, and can be done by simply dropping into the engineering office anytime through the term. More information concerning relative strengths and weaknesses of the CAS and BASc programs can be found on our web site, and will be discussed as classes go along as well. Students can go on to complete full engineering degrees after doing either program.

Should you have any questions at all about all of this, we would be more than happy to assist you. Just call the office at (902) 585 -1206 to speak with Valerie or myself. Valerie has access to the campus registration system directly from her desk and can adjust your registration quickly over the phone. Some of the more involved questions may take a day or two to sort out, but we will always do our best to handle them as quickly as we can.     

I look forward to meeting you in the fall.
Yours Truly,  

Andrew Mitchell, P.Eng., Ph.D.
Director