In Knowledge Integration, we care about providing an excellent education while also offering opportunities for students to grow professionally and personally into well rounded citizens. We’re intentional about creating community, as a way for students to connect with and learn from one another. In fact, many of the opportunities below have been spearheaded by students themselves!
Tight-Knit Community
Community is one of the backbones to the KI program in part thanks to the weekly KI Seminars and the student-led Knowledge Integration Student Society (KISS). KISS plans events, weekly meetings, and organizes the annual mentorship program where each first year student is paired with an upper year student to help their transition to university. In KI, not only will you get to know each of your peers but you’ll get to know students from other cohorts. You’ll also be on a first-name basis with your professors thanks to the smaller class sizes of your core KI courses.
Hands-on Learning
A lot of the learning and skills you’ll learn in KI will be through hands-on learning, so that you can apply the theories and concepts you’ve learned to real world situations. Learn how to manage projects, collaborate, research, brainstorm, and prototype with KI’s third-year design capstone project, the Knowledge Integration eXhibition (KIX). In your fourth year, you'll work on an 8-month independent research, design or creative Senior Honours Project that is the culmination of the expertise you've acquired in the past four years.
Flexibility & Discovery
By nature, KI students are curious and often have a diverse range of interests. With 17 electives, you can take your time to discover your passion, or dive right in. KI students explore from a wide variety of specializations – as such, creating an environment that is collaborative rather than competitive, as a cohort may be specializing in over 10+ fields rather than singular career path. As a result, students discover new interests from their community and bring in a wealth of cross-disciplinary knowledge to their classes.
Go Abroad
At the end of your second year, you’ll have the chance to go on a 10-day field trip as preparation for your third-year Museum group project. You’ll explore Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam or Copenhagen with your cohort, seeing museum design in practice and forging unforgettable moments with your peers. Want to study and travel during a study term? KI students have been able to coordinate with the KI Advisor to go on an international exchange in the Spring term of their third year.
Summer Off? No – Summer On!
As a regular stream program, KI students have the Spring term to explore different opportunities, from field work to internships, research assistantships, studies, experiential learning programs and much more. With our program KI Works, you’ll receive a formal recognition of your summer placement at the time of graduation. Check out Lindsay’s summer at an archaeological field school in Jordan, Katie’s experience at the Redfish School of Change in B.C., or even Sam’s sound processing internship in Denmark.
Extra-Curriculars & Advocacy
KI students are active members of their community and passionate about social justice. There are a number of opportunities unique to KI students that you can explore: from the Anti-Oppression Knowledge Integrator working group (AOK), to planning the student-led undergraduate Combining Two Cultures conference in collaboration with other universities, joining student governance roles at the KI, Environment faculty and/or the university-level, participating in the student-run, peer-reviewed undergraduate academic Journal of Integrative Research & Reflection (JIRR), and exploring the 200+ clubs offered at the university.