Course Offerings and Registration

1. KS100 tutorial T1 is only open to Cultural Studies (KS) and Communication Studies (CS) majors until July 14.
2. KS101 tutorial T1 is only open to KS and CS majors until July 14.
3. Senior KS courses are open only to KS and CS majors until July 14.

Other students may register beginning July 15.

Prerequisite overrides are allowed for senior KS courses if one of either your major or overall GPA is at least 7.00.  Send an email to csaadv@wlu.ca with your ID number, course code and the term when you wish to take the course.

Communication Studies Course Limit

Communication Studies majors are allowed to register for no more than 4.0 Communication Studies (CS) credits (eight courses) over fall and winter terms until July 11 at 4 p.m., so that all students can have courses and fulfill program requirements.

If you register for more than the amount allowed before July 11 at 4 p.m. you will be arbitrarily de-registered from extra courses without consultation.

After July 11 at 4 p.m., you may register as you wish in courses that remain open.

400-Level Restrictions

Year 4 Communication Studies majors are allowed to register in:

1. One section of CS400 (senior seminar);
2. Two sections of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416. The two sections must be of different categories. For example, you may register for one section of CS411 and one section of CS416. You may not register for two sections of CS416.

These restrictions remain in place until lifted by the department. If you register for more than the amount allowed, you will be arbitrarily de-registered from extra courses without consultation. You may go on as many waitlists as you wish (waitlists will be added July 15), but may register in only one section of CS400 and two sections of CS411-416. The department will be monitoring registration on a frequent basis. Should space remain after all students have registered, the department may lift this restriction to allow students to have more than one section. Students would be notified by email to their mylaurier email account regarding when the restrictions lift.

Students following the programs requiring one of CS401 or CS402 or CS403 or CS405 may use one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

Students joining the program in their senior years should expect to take longer to complete requirements.

Restrictions by Other Programs

Restrictions are deliberately placed; you should not expect to be given exceptions. The type of restriction and how long the restrictions remain varies from one department to another. Some departments do not restrict any courses, some restrict some courses and some restrict all courses.

To check whether a course has a restriction and when the restriction ends, please use the 'LORIS Browse Classes' function, click on the course name, select 'Restrictions".

• Senior CS courses are restricted to CS majors until July 19 at 11:59pm; you may register on July 20 for classes that are not full.
• 400-level courses: These courses remain restricted to Year 4 honours Communication Studies majors always.

• 200-level reserved seating: Approximately 2/3 of spaces in all 200-level courses will be reserved for Year 2 majors. The remaining spaces are reserved for students in other years of study.
• 300-level reserved seating: Approximately 2/3 of spaces in all 300-level courses, excepting CS353 online, will be reserved for Year 3 majors. The remaining spaces are reserved for students in other years of study.  There will be no reserve on CS353 online.
• 400-level courses: These courses remain restricted to Year 4 honours Communication Studies majors always.

If you see spaces in a course but are unable to register and the error message is "Course has seats reserved for specific reasons determined by the Dept..." that means the spaces reserved for your Year are gone and the remaining spaces are for other Years.

Please try registering in other sections of the same course or try again later, as students in your Year may drop out. We are also lifting the reserve on July 11 afternoon.

Communication Studies Courses

Restrictions are placed by the department after much planning and careful consideration of many factors. We therefore will not override any of our restrictions.

Prerequisite overrides are allowed only if you have taken a course elsewhere equivalent to the prerequisite course. If you feel this applies to you, please send an email to csaadv@wlu.ca using your mylaurier email account, with relevant details. Please include your student ID number.

Cultural Studies Courses

Prerequisite overrides are allowed for senior Cultural Studies courses if one of either your major or overall GPA is at least 7.00.  Send an email to csaadv@wlu.ca with your ID number, course code and the term when you wish to take the course.

Wait lists will be available for senior Cultural Studies courses and certain Communication Studies courses. We are unable to add wait listing to most CS courses because wait listing conflicts with reserved seating which we use to ensure equitable access to 200- and 300-level CS courses.

• Fall or Winter terms:
  • Wait listing is available for CS353 online and senior Cultural Studies courses
  • Wait listing will be added to 400-level CS courses on July 15, once all major students have registered
• Spring term: Wait listing is available for all courses

Once space in the wait-listed course is available for you, an email notification will be sent to your MyLaurier email address.  You have 24 hours to register for the course before your name is removed from the waitlist, and you lose the option to register.

Keep in mind that the waitlist should be considered a "wish list" as registration is not guaranteed to students on the waitlist. Make sure you are registered for your required courses; you could drop courses later once you get into the section you want.

• Procedure: If an instructor suspects a case of academic and/or research misconduct, he/she will initiate the Academic Misconduct Investigation and Adjudication Process as stated in University Policy 12.2.
• Important: Regardless of the specific penalty levied, the names of all students engaged in academic misconduct will be reported to the department, the Dean of Arts office, and the University’s central registry.

There are only two required courses in first year:

• CS100 and CS101 for Communication Studies
• KS100 and KS101 for Cultural Studies.

All other courses should be chosen based on your own interests. The first year is an introductory year and you should select courses from various different disciplines.

Communication Studies

We do not have a yearly scheduled curriculum. You are required to take CS203 and CS235 in your second year. Successful completion of both courses is required for third-year courses.

You are required to complete CS400 and one other 400-level, advanced topic non-seminar Communication Studies (CS) class. Beyond this there are no specific courses that you are required to take in a given year.

However, in Year 3, you may wish to consider the 400-level courses you are interested in, and ensure you take any required prerequisites.

Cultural Studies

Cultural studies has a fairly open curriculum with many possible courses in several departments. At the 200-level, KS203 and 1.0 additional KS credit are required. At the 300-level, 0.5 credit from the KS curriculum is required. You must take one fourth-year KS course, KS400. Additional requirements, including KS Program Electives, are described in the calendar.

It is our department policy not to override class limits. If a class or tutorial is full your only option is to check through LORIS for a space to become available or add your name to the waitlist, if available (see Wait Lists above).

The Communication Studies department offers courses during the fall and winter terms based upon a budget of 4 credits per major in the program. This budget is what is allocated to the department from the Faculty of Arts. In order to ensure an equitable distribution of courses among all majors in our program, we expect you to stay within that budget. At a later date, once everyone has had a reasonable opportunity to choose their courses and schedule their classes, the 4 credit cap will be lifted and majors may select additional courses subject to availability. Until that time, if you exceed the budget, we will remove you from any and all courses above 4 credits and you can expect it to be the most popular (including 400-level seminar) courses to be removed first.

With the exception of CS203, CS235, CS353OC and 400-level courses, senior courses have spaces reserved by year status. To ensure students of all years have reasonable access to courses, 60% of spaces in 200-level courses will be reserved for Year 2 students and 60% of spaces in 300-level courses will be reserved for Year 3 students. These reservations will be waived later in the summer. Finally, Year 4 students are restricted to one registration in CS400 until later in the summer (date to be announced each year).

Current requirements:

• For students entering Year 2, you will need to have completed CS100 and CS101 with a C+ in each course, a CS GPA of 6.0, and an overall GPA of 4.0.
• For students entering Year 3 or Year 4, you will need C+ in each of CS100 and CS101, CS GPA of 6.0 or higher and an overall GPA of 9.0 or higher.

The overall GPA includes every course in your Laurier record. The CS GPA includes Communication Studies core (CS) and elective courses (KS). Provided you have the required GPAs, you can declare yourself as a Communication Studies major through LORIS. Alternatively, you can fill out a program selection form available from Enrolment Services.

Note: If you have repeated either CS100 or CS101 and achieved less than a C+ in the second instance, you will not be able to continue in the program.

No. If you are already enrolled at Laurier and did not enter as a Communication Studies major, then you must first enrol in and successfully complete CS100 and CS101 meeting all progression requirements.

If you do not meet either of the GPA requirements you can retake a course to try and fulfill the requirements. You could also pursue Communication Studies as a minor, rather than as a major. Consult your faculty advisors to better understand and discuss your options.

Note: You may only retake a course once and the second mark received will be what is counted, whether lower or higher than the first.

That depends upon what you have already completed towards the program requirements. The Communication Studies program is designed to be completed in four consecutive years of study. If you are changing your program or returning to the program, you may need more than four academic years in total to complete your new requirements.

During the fall and winter terms, all courses offered by the Communications Studies department have majors-only restrictions, excepting CS100 and CS101. Senior courses in Communication Studies are restricted to majors only until later in the registration period. The dates when the major restrictions will be removed will be posted in the 'LORIS Browse Classes' function.

The Management Option is handled by the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics; consult a Business department academic advisor.

Yes. These are called Letter of Permission courses. The applicable forms and instructions are available from Enrolment Services. When selecting courses at another institution, be sure that they do not overlap with courses you have already taken at Laurier. It is essential that you receive the necessary permissions from your academic advisor and Enrolment Services before you start your course. The Communication Studies department has a residency requirement that limits Communication Studies majors to a maximum 1.5 credits in CS equivalents be taken on Letter of Permission.

It is important to note that because this is a university and not a college program, we do not train you for practice in a specific field. It is a misconception to think that an undergraduate student in history becomes an historian, that a biology student becomes a biologist or that a communication studies student gets employment in the media industry. A university degree gives you a broad set of critical and analytic skills that can be applied in any area of employment. In the job market you will be competing with others who have degrees in history, English, biology, kinesiology, business, geography and many other fields. The type of job you get has more to do with how you market yourself than the subject of your degree. The Laurier Career Centre is a terrific resource for those thinking about work after graduation.

Yes, you can double count courses that appear in the requirements of your Communication Studies degree and another major, minor or option; however, you still only receive 0.5 credit for the course (or 1.0 credit if it was a full-year course).