U of C offers new combined degree in engineering and business

By Saima Asad, May 19 2017 —

The University of Calgary is offering a new combined degree that allows students to graduate from both the Schulich School of Engineering and the Haskayne School of Business in five years. The program was announced on May 16 and is the first of its kind in Western Canada. There are currently nine students enrolled in the program at the U of C as part of a pilot project.

Schulich dean William Rosehart said the idea of combining the two programs has existed for decades.

“It’s been discussed on and off for a number of years,” he said. “As early as the ‘80s there was discussion about [whether] engineering and business [could] come together to offer a learning pathway such as this.”

Rosehart said that interfaculty collaboration and the concept of a “one university family” under the U of C’s previous Eyes High strategy helped this program come to fruition.

Students can enter the combined program at the start of their first or second year at the U of C. They can complete the combined degree in five years due to an overlap in course requirements between the two programs.

“We’ve gone through and have found a number of synergies where we only have to have the students take one of those two course requirements,” Rosehart said.

Third-year student Scott McNichol is one of the first nine students to take the program. He is in his second year of the program.

“I think that it’s a really well thought-out program,” he said. “It’s really important to have interdisciplinary knowledge and a skill set that can really open a number of different doors for me.”

The program’s first cohort of students are expected to graduate with both a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Commerce in 2020.