Undergraduate Course Offerings

Make an appointment to consult about your program/courses by email to bioadvising@wlu.ca.

In order to provide you with help, you must include your Laurier student ID number.

Courses will fill quickly. Sometimes a course will have a waitlist but if it has a lab or tutorial it will not have a waitlist. If a course you want to take is full, check LORIS regularly, right up until the end of the first two weeks of classes, to see if a space has come available for you.

If you are in 3rd or 4th year and have completed your required 200 level BI courses then keep in mind that you can choose senior BI (HN or WASC) courses at any year level (200, 300 and 400) as long as you have completed the prerequisites. If you aren’t able to enrol in a certain course this year, then you likely will next year.

Full Courses

We cannot give overrides for courses once they are full and at capacity. However, we are interested in knowing when demand exceeds capacity. Please write to bioadvising@wlu.ca and include the course details. In the subject line of your email include the words “course full” and the course number. We can’t promise solutions.

Enrolling in HN Courses

HN210, HN220 and HN320 are counted towards your senior BI credits but they are the responsibility of the Health Sciences Department. HN210 and HN220 are cross-listed with KP course and are taught by the Kinesiology Department. Therefore the Biology Department has relatively little influence over enrolment issues. HN courses are restricted to HE and KP majors only and this restriction is held for extra time (restrictions are not lifted when other major restrictions are lifted). Often the KP side of the course will have empty seats when the HN side is full and so you will not be able to enrol even though it shows seats are available.

You must complete the prerequisite(s) in order to enrol in a course. If you feel you have complete the equivalent of a prerequisite (for example at another university) and it is not recognized in LORIS then you may request an override by writing to bioadvising@wlu.ca. Include the course title, course code, CRN, details of your rationale, the error messages you receive when you try to enrol and any other relevant information. Merely having an interest in the subject matter and a willingness to work hard is not a rationale for an override.

Overrides will not be given for classes that are full and are at capacity.

• BI110: Unifying Life Processes
• BI226: Genetics
• BI266: Life on Earth: Plants
• BI276: Life on Earth: Microbes
• BI300: Environmental Toxicology
• BI302: Evolution
• BI305: Life and Endosymbiotic Theory
• BI330: Fundamentals of Histology
• BI349: Embryology
• BI358: Animals: Form and Function
• BI363: Plant Ecology
• BI368: Plants: Form and Function
• BI376: Microbial Physiology
• BI393: Biostatistics
• BI416/HE431: Pathophysiology
• BI426: Genome Dynamics
• BI451: Fish Physiological Adaptations
• BI459: Endocrinology
• BI463: Environmental Stress Biology of Plants
• BI470/HE432: Biomedical Virology
• BI475: Microbial Ecology
• BI484: Fundamentals of Parasitology
• BI488: Invertebrate Biodiversity and Conservation
• BI496D: From Genetics to Genomics
• BI499: Thesis
  • To apply for our BI499: Thesis course, you will have to complete the BI499 Intent to Register Application Form and attach a letter of motivation.
• WASC302: Limnology
• WASC303: Field Methods in Applied Water Science
• WASC403: Lab Techniques in Water Science

• BI111: Biological Diversity and Evolution
• BI196: Practical Skill for Biologists
• BI206: Ecology
• BI236: Cell Biology
• BI256: Life on Earth: Animals
• BI306: Biogeography and Conservation Biology
• BI308: Animal Behaviour
• BI309: Population Ecology
• BI317/HE303:Introduction to Immunology
• BI326/CH454: Bioinformatics
• BI338: Molecular Cell Biology
• BI369: Plant Physiology
• BI374: Physiological Applications of Microbiology
• BI396Z: Animal Physiology in Anthropocene
• BI400: Topics in Environmental Toxicology
• BI405: Community Ecology
• BI416/HE431: Pathophysiology
• BI441: Recombinant DNA Technology
• BI449: Developmental Biology
• BI456: Environmental Physiology of Animals
• BI458: Vertebrate Biodiversity and Conservation 
• BI464: Plants and People
• BI468: Plant Biodiversity and Conservation
• BI470/HE432: Biomedical Virology
• BI476: Microbial Disease
• BI496C: Science Communication
• BI499: Thesis 
  • To apply for our BI499: Thesis course, you will have to complete the BI499 Intent to Register Application Form and attach a letter of motivation.
• WASC304:  Wetland Science
• WASC401:  Water Policy and Legislation Water Science

The following courses contain a laboratory component

Previous Special Topics Courses Offered Since 2010

Some special topics courses become "regularized" as senior BI or WASC courses and details are provided below. When a special topics course is regularized then you cannot hold credit for both the special topic course and the regular course (they are exclusions so you can only get credit for the special topics course or the regular course it became).

An information session will be held on January 19, 2023 at 7 pm on zoom. Register in advance for this meeting: https://wilfrid-laurier.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtc--vrDgiG9LxYhTlCEvgD1lNAzQkTNjK  After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology

The Ontario Universities Program in Field Biology (OUPFB) provides students from participating universities with a tremendously varied selection of field courses. If you are interested in the natural world and keen on gaining the experience and perspective uniquely offered through field-based learning and research, this is your opportunity. The Department of Biology at Laurier will contribute in 2023 with a new course, module #10, Subarctic Aquatic Ecology, which will be taught by Dr. Heidi Swanson. The Laurier (internal) course number for module #10 is BI394 (The Changing North: Subarctic Ecosystems in the Face of Climate Warming).

Application Process

Descriptions of all field courses, including costs and prerequisites, are available on the OUPFB website.

There is a unique application process for all OUPFB courses. Please note that you CANNOT apply in Loris. Registrations will take place January 23--27, 9 am - 4 pm.

1. Download the PDF form: OUPFB Application Form.
2. Fill in the form completely. If you apply to 2 field courses, fill in two applications.
3. Bring the completed application to the Biology Office in person. The date and time of your application is considered the day/time you brought in the application. This is important because available sits are awarded on a “first come, first served” basis.
4. In addition to the regular 0.5-credit tuition fee, you are required to pay a deposit of $350 to Laurier, and later, the balance of the course fee to the host university as instructed by the course syllabus. If you apply to two courses, please provide two deposit cheques. Please made out the cheque to Wilfrid Laurier University. Cash is also acceptable, but cheques are preferred.
5. Please bring the deposit cheque (in person) to the Biology Admin Office (BA 401). The last day to do this is January 27, 2023 (9 am to 4 pm).

Enrolment in each course is limited. Each university has only a small number of guaranteed spots in certain courses. This is why it is important to have several course options in your application. After the first round of applications described above, most likely at the beginning of March, the remaining sits will be made available on the OUPFB courses’ webpage, and can be filled by students from any university in the order of their application. Therefore, an application for these remaining sits will be possible at this stage too.

Courses may be cancelled if there are too few early applications or if mandated by the host university and/or provincial Government.

The $350 deposit will be refunded if a student is not accepted into the course of his/her choosing (first or second choice). However, students who drop a field course should not expect a refund of any field course-related costs. Efforts are made by host universities to find a replacement in case of a drop out, but if that is not possible, the deposit will not be reimbursed.

Please contact Drs. Mihai Costea (mcostea@wlu.ca) or Heidi Swanson (hswanson@wlu.ca) if you have questions.