Undergraduate Course Offerings

Beginning in June 2023, any students seeking registration-related advising must fill out the Faculty of Science Registration Inquiry Form. Inquiries received will be assessed by Science Advising and may be addressed by Science Advising or the Biology undergraduate advisor, Dr. Scott Ramsay. 

Students are asked to use this form instead of emailing bioadvising@wlu.ca. Emails sent to this address will receive an automatic reply with instructions to fill out the new form. 

Students are thanked for their understanding during this change of procedure. 

To request an override for a Biology (BI) course, please use the Faculty of Science's Biology Course Override Request form. 

Courses will fill quickly. Some Biology courses have waitlists, but those with labs or tutorials will not. 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 become 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 may be able to next year. 

Full Courses

The Biology department cannot give overrides for courses once they have reached full capacity. However, we are interested in knowing when demand exceeds capacity. Please write to bioadvising@wlu.ca and include the course details, have the subject line include the words “course full” and the course number. Although the capacity for future courses may be reconsidered, we can’t promise solutions.

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 at capacity.

Enrolling in HN Courses

Biology students are now able to enrol in HN courses without receiving special permission or overrides from the Health Sciences department. However, please note the following: 

HN204, HN210, HN220 and HN320 count towards your senior BI credits. HN204 and HN320 are managed by the Health Sciences department. HN210 and HN220 are cross-listed with KP courses and are managed by the Kinesiology department. Therefore, the Biology department has little influence over enrolment issues for those courses.

You may have to wait to register in an HN course until after it has been opened for Health Sciences and Kinesiology students. If this is the case, your registration time ticket on LORIS will indicate the date and time that you can begin to register in HN courses.

Biology students can only register in the HN sections of HN/KP cross-listed courses. KP sections of cross-listed HN/KP are reserved for Kinesiology students. 

If you receive error messages when registering in HN204 or HN320, please contact headvising@wlu.ca. For HN210 and HN220, please contact kinadmin@wlu.ca. 

• BI110: Unifying Life Processes
• BI206: Ecology
• BI266: Life on Earth: Plants
• BI276: Life on Earth: Microbes
• BI300: Environmental Toxicology
• BI302: Evolution
• BI305: Life and Endosymbiotic Theory
• BI308: Behavioural Ecology
• BI317: Introduction to Immunology
• BI330: Fundamentals of Histology
• BI341/CH341: Lab Methods: Cell and Molecular
• BI349: Embryology
• BI363: Plant Ecology
• BI368: Plants: Form & Function
• BI376: Microbial Physiology
• BI393: Biostatistics
• BI396Z: Animal Physiology in the Anthropocene
• BI416: Pathophysiology
• BI426: Genome Dynamics
• BI451: Fish Physiological Adaptations
• BI463: Environmental Stress Biology of Plants
• BI476: Microbial Disease
• BI484: Fundamentals of Parasitology
• BI496G: Plant-Microbe Biology
• 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. Your registration in the course is contingent on approval from a faculty supervisor. 
• WASC202: Issues in Water & Environmental Health
• WASC302: Liminology

• BI111: Biological Diversity & Evolution
• BI196: Practical Skills for Biologists 
• BI226: Molecular Biology and Genetics
• BI236: Cell Biology
• BI256: Life on Earth: Animals
• BI306: Biogeography & Conservation Biology
• BI309: Population Ecology
• BI326: Bioinformatics
• BI336: Molecular Cell Biology
• BI341: Lab Methods: Cell & Molecular
• BI358: Animals: Form and FUnction
• BI359: Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy
• BI369: Plant Physiology
• BI374: Physical Applications of Microbiology
• BI396X: Molecular Biology of Plant Growth
• BI400: Ecological Risk Assessments & Sustainability
• BI405: Comunity Ecology
• BI407: Animal Communication
• BI441: Advanced Molecular Biotechnology
• BI449: Developmental Biology
• BI456: Environmental Physiology of Animals
• BI458: Vertebrate Biodiversity & Conservation
• BI459: Endocrinology
• BI464: Plants and People
• BI468: Plant Biodiversity & Conservation
• BI470: Biomedical Virology
• BI496H: 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. Your registration in the course is contingent on approval from a faculty supervisor. 
• WASC304:  Wetland Science
• WASC401:  Water Policy and Legislation 

The following courses contain a laboratory component:

• BI256
• BI266
• BI276 
• BI300 
• BI308
• BI309
• BI326/CH454
• BI338
• BI349
• BI359
• BI363
• BI367
• BI368
• BI369
• BI374
• BI405
• BI431
• BI439
• BI441
• BI449
• BI456
• BI475
• BI476
• BI484
• BI488

Please note that the Department of Biology does not provide waitlists for senior courses with lab components. 

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. Your registration in the course is contingent on approval from a faculty supervisor.

Applications are accepted from Winter term through the start of Fall term each year. For example, if you apply in Winter or Spring 2024, you are applying to take the course from Fall 2024 through Winter 2025. 

Special Topics Courses for 2023-2024

Fall 2023

• BI396Z: Animal Physiology in the Anthropocene
• BI496G: Plant-Microbe Biology

Winter 2024

• BI396X: Molecular Biology of Plant Growth
• BI496H: From Genetics to Genomics

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, students cannot hold credit for both the special topic course and the regular course. They are considered exclusions, meaning students can only get credit for the special topics course or the regular course it became. If you enrolled in a special topics course that has become regularized, your ability to enrol in its regularized section will be restricted. 

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.