The courses listed below are pre-approved technical elective options. This does not mean that all courses will fit into your timetable, will be offered every year, or that seats will be available by the time your registration opens. Some courses are required courses for other programs and thus prioritize students from such programs first. The earlier your registration time, the greater the chance you will register into popular courses. The more you check on seat availability, the greater your chance of finding an open seat when another student drops the course. This is the reality of registration for most university programs. There are enough options that you should be able to find something that works. Because registration is subject to available spaces, students must plan ahead by having multiple options in mind in the event that preferred courses become full, may not be offered, or conflict with another course.
For instructions on how to register for these technical electives, scroll down to the “Instructions for registering in pre-approved technical electives” section on the How to Register page. Some courses require prerequisites and, while the “Meets Pre-Reqs?” column in the tables below offers guidance, students must verify prerequisites requirements themselves, as course information may change. Some 300- and 400-level technical electives require completion of specific 200-level courses, so advance planning is strongly recommended.Â
APSC Courses
| Course | Name | Term | Meets Pre-Reqs? |
|---|---|---|---|
| APSC 461 | Global Engineering Leadership – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| APSC 486 | New Venture Design | 1,2 | Yes*** |
| CHBE 344 | Introduction to Unit Operations | 1 | Yes |
| CHBE 352 | Transport Phenomena II | 1 | Yes |
| CHBE 355 | Kinetics and Reactor Design | 2 | No |
| CHBE 376 | Computer Flow sheeting and Unit Operation Design | 2 | |
| CHBE 381 *** | Biological Engineering and Biomanufacturing I | 2 | Yes*** |
| CHBE 472 | Technologies for Human and Environmental Health | 2 | |
| CHBE 473 | Environmental Engineering and Sustainability Leadership | 2 | Yes |
| CHBE 476 | Advanced Process Engineering and Simulation | 1 | Yes |
| CHBE 477 | Fuel Cell and Electrochemical Engineering | 2 | Yes |
| CHBE 483 | Energy Engineering for Climate Change and Sustainability | 1 | |
| CHBE 487 | Interfacial Phenomena | 2 | Yes |
| CHBE 488 | Carbon Capture, Conversion and Sequestration Technologies | 2 | Yes |
| CHBE 493 | Thesis Proposal-Environmental Topic | 1 | Yes |
| CHBE 494 | Thesis-Environmental Topic | 2 | Yes |
| CIVL 300 | Construction Engineering and Management | 2 | Yes |
| CIVL 301 *** | Modelling and Decision-Making in Civil Engineering | 1 | Yes*** |
| CIVL 311 | Soil Mechanics II | 1 | No |
| CIVL 340 *** | Transportation Engineering I | 2 | Yes*** |
| CIVL 408 | Geo-Environmental Engineering – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| CIVL 411 | Foundation Engineering II | 2 | |
| CIVL 413 | Design of Earth Dams and Containment Structures | 2 | No |
| CIVL 417 | Coastal Engineering | 2 | Yes |
| CIVL 418 | Engineering Hydrology | 2 | Yes |
| CIVL 440 *** | Transportation Engineering II | 1 | Yes*** |
| CIVL 441 *** | Transportation Planning and Analysis | 2 | Yes*** |
| CIVL 478 | Building Science | 2 | Yes |
| CIVL 498Q | Topics in Civil Engineering – ENV MICROBIO ENG | 1 | |
| MECH 327 | Thermodynamics II | 1 | |
| MECH 375 | Heat Transfer | 1,2 | |
| MECH 380 | Fluid Dynamics | 2 | |
| MECH 386 | Industrial Fluid Mechanics – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| MECH 392 | Manufacturing Processes | 1 | |
| MECH 469 | Dynamic System Modelling – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| MECH 470 | Energy Conversion Systems | 2 | |
| MECH 495 | Industrial Engineering | 2 | Yes |
| MECH 496 | Engineering Management | 1 | Yes |
| MINE 420 | Applied Geostatics – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| MINE 444 | Urban Mining: Recovering Value From E-waste | 2 | Yes |
| MINE 455 | Mine Water Management – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| MINE 486 | Mining and The Environment | 2 | Yes |
| MINE 491 | Mine and Plant Engineering Design Feasibility Study | 1,2 |
*** Instructor permission is required for registration
Non-APSC Courses
| Course | Name | Term | Meets Pre-Reqs? |
|---|---|---|---|
| APBI 402 | Sustainable Soil Management | 2 | No |
| ARCL 309 | Archeology Collapse & Sustainability – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| ATSC 313 | Renewable Energy Meteorology | 1,2 | Yes |
| CHEM 301 | Aqueous Environmental Chemistry | 2 | No |
| CHEM 302 | Atmospheric Environmental Chemistry | 1 | No |
| CHEM 341 | Global Challenges: A Chemical Perspective | 1 | No |
| COMM 487 ** | Environmental Management – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| COMR 329 ** | Principles of Organizational Behaviour | 1,2 | |
| COMR 457 ** | Fundamentals of Financial Accounting | 1,2 | |
| COMR 458 ** | Fundamentals of Managerial Accounting | 2 | |
| COMR 465 ** | Marketing Management | 1,2 | |
| CONS 330 | Conservation Science and Sustainability | 2 | No |
| CONS 370 | Indigenous Forestry | 2 | Yes |
| CONS 486 | Fish Conservation and Management | 2 | No |
| CPSC 302 | Numerical Computation for Algebraic Problems | 1 | |
| CPSC 303 | Numerical Approximation and Discretization | 2 | |
| ECON 371 | Economics of the Environment | 1,2 | |
| ENST 311 | Urban Environments | 1,2 | No |
| ENVR 410 | Energy, Environment, and Society – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| ENVR 420 | Ecohydrology of Watersheds and Water Systems – Not offered in Winter 2025 | 2 | Yes |
| EOSC 340 | Climate Change: Causes & Solutions | 1 | Yes |
| EOSC 350 | Environmental, Geotechnical, and Exploration Geophysics I | 1 | Yes |
| EOSC 372 | Introductory Oceanography: Circulation and Plankton | 1 | Yes |
| EOSC 373 | Introductory Oceanography: Climate & Ecosystems | 1 | No |
| EOSC 426 | Fundamentals of Geomicrobiology | 1 | |
| EOSC 428 | Field Techniques in Groundwater Hydrology | 2 | Yes |
| EOSC 429 | Groundwater Contamination | 2 | Yes |
| EOSC 442 | Climate Measurement and Analysis | 1,2 | No |
| EOSC 474 | Marine Pollution | 1 | Yes |
| FRST 385 | Watershed Hydrology | 1 | Yes |
| FRST 386 | Aquatic Ecosystems and Fish in Forested Watersheds | 2 | Yes |
| FRST 411 | Complex Adaptive Systems, Global Change Science, and Ecology Sustainability | 1 | Yes |
| FRST 443 | Remote Sensing for Ecosystem Management – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| GEOG 310 | Environment and Sustainability | 1,2 | No |
| GEOG 312 | Climate Change: Science and Society | 2 | No |
| GEOG 313 | Environmental Justice and Social Change | 2 | No |
| GEOG 314 | Analyzing Environmental Problems | 2 | No |
| GEOG 497 | The Arctic | 1 | |
| GEOS 300 | Microscale Weather & Climate | 2 | No |
| GEOS 370 | Advanced Geographic Information Science | 1,2 | Yes |
| GEOS 401 | Urban Meteorology | 2 | No |
| ISCI 360 | Systems Approaches to Regional Sustainability | 1 | No |
| LAW 387B | Environmental Law | 1 | |
| MICB 301 | Microbial Ecophysiology | 1 | No |
| MICB 405 | Bioinformatics | 1 | No |
| MICB 425 | Microbial Ecological Genomics | 2 | No |
| PHYS 333 | Energy and Climate | 1 | Yes |
| POLI 351 | Environmental Politics and Policy | 1 | Yes |
| POLI 375A | Global Environmental Politics | 1,2 | yes |
| SCIE 420 | Sustainability for Community and the World – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| UFOR 330 | Environmental Justice and Urban Green Equity | 2 | Yes |
+ EOSC 428 has limited capacity, with priority given to GEOE students. ENVL students must first register for the Waiting List, and be screened for significantly restricted seats.
** Restricted to students taking a Commerce Minor. Only one 3-credit Commerce course can be double counted as a technical elective.
Restricted Technical Electives
| Course | Name | Term | Meets Pre-Reqs? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTH 360 | Introduction to Ecological Anthropology – Not offered in Winter 2025 | ||
| APSC 367 | Humanitarian Engineering: Politics and Practice | 1 | Yes |
| CONS 425 | Sustainable Energy: Policy and Governance | 2 | Yes |
| GEOG 302 | Climate Justice | 2 | Yes |
| GEOG 350 | Urban Worlds | 2 | Yes |
| PLAN 331 | The Just City in a Divided World | 1 | Yes |
| PLAN 351 | Green Cities | 1 | Yes |
| UFOR 403/ APBI 423 | Ecological Restoration | 2 | Yes |
| PLAN 425 | Urban Planning Issues and Concepts | 2 | Yes |
Note: Students may take only one of ANTH 360 (effective Sept 2025), APSC 367, CONS 425, GEOG 302, GEOG 350, PLAN 331, PLAN 351 and PLAN 425 as a Technical Elective. Additional courses from this list may be taken as Humanity courses or as extra credits, depending on their eligibility assessed here.
* Students will not receive credit for CIVL 406
One UNBC course from the list below may be used to meet a UBC secondary technical elective requirement. The course must have been taken prior to transit to UBC.
ENSC 302 Low Carbon Energy Development
ENSC 303 Energy Systems and Sustainability
ENSC 404 Waste Management
ENSC 406 Environmental Modelling
ENSC 408 Storms
ENSC 425 Climate Change and Global Warming
ENSC 450 Environmental and Geophysical Data Analysis
ENSC 452 Reclamation and Remediation of Disturbed Environments
FSTY 345 Wood Materials Science
GEOG 333 Geography Field School
NREM 410 Watershed Management