Certificates & Courses - Centre for Global Engineering

Each year, CGEN offers four courses focused on building students’ competencies in design thinking, global development, and participatory research. In addition to learning key technical skills to enable them to solve real global challenges, students are afforded opportunities in those courses to conduct field visits to implement their ideas or to expand their understanding of the problems faced by vulnerable communities.

Certificate in Global Engineering

For undergraduate students interested in strengthening their proficiency on topics related to engineering and global development, CGEN offers the Certificate in Global Engineering. To attain it, students must complete a minimum of three courses per the requirements below:

Two core CGEN courses

One of the following electives

Two core CGEN courses

Technology, Engineering and Global Development

APS420/1420

Appropriate Technology & Design for Global Development

APS530

Innovative Technologies and Organizations in Global Energy Systems

APS510

One of the following electives

ANT204H1/H5 Social Cultural Anthropology and Global Issues

A course focused on recent anthropological scholarship that seeks to understand and explain the transformation of contemporary societies and cultures. Topics may include some of the following: new patterns of global inequality, war and neo-colonialism, health and globalization, social justice and indigeneity, religious fundamentalism, gender inequalities, biotechnologies and society etc.

ENV333H1: Ecological Worldviews

Approaches to environmental concerns are often marked by assumptions that reflect distinct worldviews positing particular understandings of the role of the human with respect to nature. This course explores sundry economic, political, scientific, religious, and moral worldviews pertaining to the environment, including environmental ethics, Gaia, ecofeminism, scientific cosmology, and indigenous perspectives.

GGR112H1: Geographies of Globalization, Development and Inequality

Economic growth, social change and environmental transformation are taking shape in an increasingly interconnected global context. This course introduces and examines critical geographic approaches to international development, economic globalization, poverty, and inequality. It pays particular attention to the roles of rural-urban and international migration in shaping specific landscapes.

GGR216H1: Global Cities

Most urban courses taught in the English-speaking world implicitly or explicitly focus on large North American, European, or Australian cities. While these places are interesting in their own right, studying them as the sole model of urbanization is misleading. To a great extent, the societies of the westernized, developed world are already highly-urbanized and have been so for decades. Cities outside of this sphere, by contrast, are generally growing much faster, and experiencing greater social and economic upheaval as a result. Understanding non-North American urbanization is a vital part of understanding cities in general. This course is an attempt to introduce students to processes of urbanization that are occurring in places other than North America. There will be a particular focus on comparing the urban form, economies, and social life in cities around the world.

JGI216H1: Urbanization & Global Change

POL201H1: Politics of Development

POL208H1: Introduction to International Relations

CDN268H1: Canada and Globalization

Note: If you are enrolled in a Global Engineering capstone project, we may count it as one of the two required core courses. For more information on that matter, please contact us.

Emphasis in Engineering and Globalization

As with undergraduates, engineering graduate students who would like to develop a career in international development may be interested in pursuing the Emphasis in Engineering and Globalization. To receive the Emphasis notation on your transcript, you are required to complete 2.0 credits worth of courses in accordance with the following requirements:

1.0 credits from the following CGEN courses:

Remaining credits from the following electives:

1.0 credits from the following CGEN courses:

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Challenges

JCR1000

Technology, Engineering and Global Development

APS420/1420

Appropriate Technology & Design for Global Development

APS530

Innovative Technologies and Organizations in Global Energy Systems

APS510

Water Sanitation, Hygiene, and Global Health

CIV1330

Remaining credits from the following electives:

APS1020H: International Business for Engineers

Students will learn the basic concepts to be considered when growing businesses via entering into foreign markets, and internationalizing entrepreneurial companies. The course is an introduction to global entrepreneurship; managing global strategy; diversifying, acquiring, and restructuring across borders; governing the corporation around the globe; making alliances and acquisitions work; understanding how institutions and resources affect the liability of foreigners; and managing corporate social responsibility within a global content. There will be example cases of how companies throughout the world, including Brazil, China and India have expanded globally. For a better understanding of the international arena while internationalizing entrepreneurial companies, there will also be a brief review of some recent global developments, including the current impact of the 2009 global economic crisis.

APS1024H: Infrastructure Resilience Planning

Planning for resilience is a fundamental of strategic and operational planning of infrastructure and requires an in-depth understanding of the operation one wishes to make resilient, its context and operating environment. This course teaches resilience planning from first principles, including the development and application of international and Canadian infrastructure resilience and investment policy, demand and dependency management, all-hazards and mitigation strategies and its relationship to Enterprise Risk Management and Business Continuity Planning.

APS1015H: Social Entrepreneurship

This course is designed for engineering students interested in starting a business venture that advances social and/or environmental good. The course provides students with as real a “social entrepreneurship” experience as is possible within a course setting – students will, independently or in groups, construct a Business Model for their entrepreneurial idea, and will pitch their model to a panel of Angel investors. Most lectures will run workshop-style: industry experts (in social marketing, social finance, HR, law and other fields), along with real social entrepreneurs, will work one-on-one with students to help refine their business models in preparation for the investment pitch. Other lectures, along with course readings, will focus on understanding the field of social entrepreneurship, with a particular emphasis on topics relevant to engineering such as clean tech commercialization and the growing field of “impact investing”

JMG2020H: Big Data and Global Cities

As urban populations grow, cities need to provide basic services (e.g. water, sanitation, public safety, transit) and address the negative externalities associated with rapid growth (e.g. air and water pollution, congestion). Ultimately, cities will have to find the fiscal resources to pay for services and infrastructure. This course will provide an introduction to data analytics and show how these tools can be applied to a variety of city problems such as transportation gridlock, shortage of affordable housing, deteriorating water and sewer infrastructure, inadequate fiscal resources, and other problems. Each problem will be described, ways to approach the problem from a data analytics perspective will be determined, and the type of data available to analyze the problem and work toward solutions will be identified.

CHL5700H: Global Health

This course is an invitation to future researchers, educators, advocates, policy makers, and practitioners to work across disciplinary/professional boundaries, as well as cultural ones, and engage fundamental questions – both theoretical and applied – in global health. CHL5700H explores the theories, lessons and skills customarily considered central to global health and the ways in which these are embodied, enacted, and realized. While numerous real-life examples are introduced to illustrate global health concepts, challenges, and opportunities, and to stimulate discussion, the course is more a space for dialogue, critical reflection, and the development of hypotheses for informed and committed action, or praxis, than an opportunity to examine a catalogue of global-health-related case studies.

Notes:

If you are undertaking an MEng project which is aligned in scope to CGEN's mandate, credits from that project may be used to count toward the elective portion of the Emphasis. For more information, please contact us.
Students who complete the requirements of the Emphasis in Engineering and Globalization will no longer be provided with a certificate, instead the emphasis will be notated on directly on their transcript