Academic program

The Knowledge Integration program is organized in three components:

Core courses: essential skills

In your core courses, you’ll develop powerful skills in communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration; and learn methods for integrating knowledge across multiple disciplinary boundaries. You’ll apply these skills through 16+ months of experiential learning: hands-on design and research projects, group projects, presentations, reflections and more.

Breadth courses: foundational knowledge

Your breadth courses will give you a balanced foundation of knowledge and transferable skills from across campus so that you can have an underlying understanding of multiple disciplines and be equipped to specialize deeper into the ones that interest you. You’ll have the flexibility to pick from a list of courses from each of the following breadths:

Elective courses: personalized expertise

With the most elective courses than any other program at Waterloo, take advantage of KI’s flexibility.  You can personalize your degree by choosing 17 courses across campus, in subjects ranging from history to health studies, calculus to chemistry, ecology to economics, psychology to fine arts, and so much more.

Many students choose to specialize in subjects that interest them and that benefit their future career path, with the choice to complete Options, minors, and specializations or even a double major. Don’t know what you’re interested in just yet? No problem! You’ll be taking most of your breadth courses during the first year and a half, which will give you plenty of time to explore new topics and make connections across campus.

Here are examples of how some of our students customized their KI program to match their unique interests and goals: