Hello. Welcome to the Bachelor of Computing Academic Information Session at the Spring Academic
Open House. My name is Greg Klotz, I am a program counsellor for the Bachelor of Computing degree, and I provide academic
advising to students. Basically I help students understand their academic options, from first
semester course selection in the summer, all the way through to graduation. My background
is that I have a B.Sc. in Applied Computer Science from Ryserson, followed by an M.Sc.
and PhD Computer Science at Guelph. Computing degrees at Guelph come in three
flavours: the Bachelor of Computing general degree, and the Bachelor of Computing Honours
degree, which has computer science major and a software engineering major, and both of those have
co-op as an option. First, a brief slide about why we have our
own degree and why do we have a Bachelor of Computing degree. We have a Bachelor of Engineering
degree at the University of Guelph. It has a common first year where students have to
take chemistry, engineering courses, engineering design, physics, etc., we have a B.Sc: this
also has a common first year. Students are required to take chemistry, biology, physics,
and calculus. We have our own degree, the Bachelor of Computing, as this is focused
on computing, it has a flexible first year where students get to choose their own electives
based on their interests. So if they want, they can take chemistry, or physics, or more math
courses, but if they prefer they can take music, history, english, zoology, or any of
our other minors. Computer science and software engineering, just to be clear, are both computing
degree majors. Neither one of them is an accredited Engineering degree. The Bachelor of Computing general degree is
three years of full-time study, so that assumes that five courses are taken each fall and
winter semester. It gives students a basic foundation in computer science. It's quick:
so there is no major, no minor, no co-op, and students only have time for a few electives
in computer science plus four arts and four science courses, but they do complete the
core courses in computer science. The Bachelor of Computing Honours degree is
four years of full-time, so again assuming five courses are taken in all eight academic
semesters, that's five years with the co-op option, and it gives students a foundation
in computing, along with specializations, and students can choose to major either in
computer science or software engineering. They have computer science electives they
can take in upper years, and they can minor in a different subject. The Computer Science major is a traditional
computing degree, focused on software development, has a bit more theory of computation, it's
flexible, mostly electives in third and fourth year, and calculus is a required course at
university, so it has a little bit more math than the software engineering major. The Software Engineering major still has a
foundation in computer science, so students still take the same core courses as the Computer
Science majors, but has a stronger emphasis on software design as a team: standards, processes,
documentation, agile, waterfall and other methods, professional standards, it has slightly
less math, no calculus course is required to be taken at university, but it does have
more teamward-based software design courses, so it has less electives in third and fourth
year. Some electives that all computing students can take are data science, cloud computing, 
computer networks, introduction to cryptography,image processing and vision, game programming, 
and in fourth year students can also do a computer science project one-on-one with a professor if they choose to.
Help on campus: there's lots of help availableon campus. For any academic type help (course selection, academic advising),
I'm happy to help. If students are not sure where to get the help they need, I'm also happy to tell
them what options are available. For grief, we have Student Accessibility Services. For
students who need a little bit of extra help with their learning, we have counselling services,
and student health services for medical and psychological needs. We have the library which
has lots of books, but they also offer many study and exam preparation sessions. If you have questions, I'm happy to help.
You can email us at cscouns@uoguelph.ca, and thank you very much for attending our virtual
spring academic open house.