Ready to start in ECE from your first day at Queen’s?

Our Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering – Innovation (CEEE-I) is a direct-entry undergraduate program option for ECE students who are interested in learning additional entrepreneurship and innovation skills. Whether you want to become an entrepreneur with a world-class engineering background or pursue an engineering career in industry, CEEE-I prepares you with the business and communication skills to give you a step up in your career.

 

Direct Entry

As an CEEE-I student, you will still experience the variety and benefits of the common engineering first year. You will still take courses across disciplines during your first year of study. However, the first-year CEEE-I course APSC 100 Engineering Practice offers you an enhanced curriculum and innovation-oriented design projects to prepare you for your upper years in the program.

This combination of a common engineering first-year and a head start in your discipline offers our CEEE-I cohort the best benefits of both worlds.

Enhanced Curriculum

The CEEE-I program includes all core BASc Computer/Electrical Engineering courses + four Commerce courses in entrepreneurship/innovation + one elective. Students graduate with a BASc in either Electrical or Computer Engineering and can take advantage of all the opportunities that the department has to offer, including the internship program, graduate studies, and the Accelerated Master’s Program that combines BASc and MASc degrees.

As a first-year CEEE-I student, you will take the same common first-year curriculum as common-core Smith Engineering students, with special course outlines and projects in three core first-year courses:

  • APSC 100 Engineering Practice l FW
  • APSC 143 Introduction to Computer Programming for Engineers F
  • APSC 114 Electromagnetics W

In your upper year, you are required to take the following four courses offered by Queen’s Smith School of Business:

This course introduces students to the language of business, as well as the main functional areas of business, and demonstrates how these areas interact to produce and market products and/or services in an economically viable manner. An emphasis is placed on both strategic and tactical development and execution in entrepreneurial contexts. The course also assists students in developing an understanding of the nature of the modern entrepreneurial enterprise in Canadian and international contexts, and of the tasks, practices, and responsibilities of its leaders. Of particular importance is the use of a capstone simulation – like the Capsim Strategy Simulation, but one geared towards entrepreneurial ventures – whose focus lies in the development and application of fundamental strategic management skills and financial analysis interpretation for decision-making purposes. The approach of the course is to challenge students to strive to develop a base-level competency in business principles which they can effectively transfer to their future entrepreneurial venture. This course provides a detailed examination of the fundamentals of a financing strategy for new ventures, and the specific financing alternatives for obtaining capital to launch new ventures. The financing alternatives include crowdfunding, angel investing, and venture capital, and thus cover the entire financing spectrum from start-up to growth capital. This course will focus on the specific commercial activities required to launch new ventures into industrial markets. Students will gain an understanding of how to size up industrial markets, apply lean principles to the new customer development process, align early-stage demand generation activities with industrial buyer behaviour, and implement best practices to acquire, retain and grow their first industrial customers. This course will make extensive use of cases both historical and ideally from the Living Case Initiative. The focus of this course is to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and tools that form the basis required to identify, analyze, plan, and execute a new venture activity. It also provides a depth of understanding of the practical realities of new ventures and growing a small business. This course requires a high degree of self-study as the major project involves the detailed analysis, planning and presentation of a business plan for a new venture proposal. Students are expected and encouraged to use this course to assess and plan actual new venture opportunities that they may seriously consider. Guest speakers, cases and concepts will be utilized to allow the student to better understand the exciting and challenging realities of entrepreneurship and managing new ventures.

Experiential Components

We encourage our CEEE-I students to experiment, learn, and pursue their own business projects outside of the classroom. There are multiple resources on campus to support your projects.  We encourage you to participate in the many initiatives by the DDQIC, including the summer innovation accelerator program QICSI. In your first year, you will have access to the Bain and the Electrical ’65 E.D Makerspace Labs in Walter Light Hall.

Community and Support

CEEE-I is a small cohort of students. The program accepts up to 50 students a year. The small community ensures that you will get to know your peers throughout the program and build a strong network with CEEE-I students and alumni. For core program courses, you will attend labs and lectures with the rest of the students in the department. In CEEE-I - specific courses, you will study in separate course sections with only your cohort.

Degree Planning: Electrical
Degree Planning: Computer

Admission and Application

Prospective students can choose to apply to CEEE-I under a separate category in OUAC.

Admission Requirements

How to Apply

Additional Program Information

CEEE-I students will need a total of three additional credits to complete their degree. Some students also take the opportunity to peruse their own innovation projects on the side, which can require a time commitment. Overall, the CEEE-I schedule was designed to not be significantly more demanding than that of the regular stream students, while still providing a solid foundation in entrepreneurship. Not at all. The program is equally useful to students who chose to go the traditional industry route but want to enhance their CV with basic entrepreneurial, communication, and innovation skills. The CEEE-I-specific courses build up on the existing Electrical and Computer Engineering Curriculum, with no loss in technical engineering credits. .

Queen’s offers a broad range of certificate and/or international exchange programs to students who wish to gain business and entrepreneurial skills. Smith Certificate in Business, The International Innovation Term (i2TRM), and the Certificate in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity (QEIC - ENIN) are all available options for undergraduate engineering students. Unlike any of these optional programs, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship designation for CEEE-I students is included in the undergraduate curriculum and requires no extra time to complete. The CEEE-I curriculum does not, however, prevent students from taking additional certification programs.

The main difference in student experience for CEEE-I students is the smaller class size. The CEEE-I program only accepts around 50 students each year and for CEEE-I-specific courses, the students learn in a separate class section. This allows for a tight-knit community of CEEE-I students across program years. It is common for upper-year and lower-year CEEE-I students to team up together for extracurricular projects, such as the programs offered by Queen’s Innovation Park and the DDQIC.

Yes, our students are well taken care of! Starting from year one, CEEE-I students have access to undergraduate student resources at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, including help from the ECE Undergraduate Chairs and access to the Bain and ECE Makerspace lab spaces.

For students already in the ECE program (i.e., years 2 and above): Students are asked to submit an academic change form request to the department and then when all the requests are in, Smith Engineering determines if there is available space in the CEEE-I stream to accommodate students who wish to change from ECE to CEEE-I. Since CEEE-I is a direct entry program with limited spots (50 spots), students cannot just automatically change from the ECE to CEEE-I program.

For students in first year engineering but not yet in our ECE program: Since CEEE-I is not one of the options offered to general engineering, when students make their discipline choice, they would have had to choose ELEC or CMPE program. The next step is to fill out an academic program change form and request to switch into Innovation from Regular Stream ECE. Every year a certain number of CEEE-I students choose to drop into the regular ECE program which leaves room for students wanting to move into the CEEE-I stream.

For students accepted into engineering but not Direct Entry ECE (CEEE-I): This is handled centrally by the Queen’s Undergraduate Admissions Office. The ECE department is not involved in the admission process. If applicants decide well before the OUAC deadline of June 1 that they want to change their choices, they can do it centrally through the OUAC system. They may also contact Queen’s admissions for more information.

Contact

To learn more about CEEE-I, please refer to our Undergraduate Contact Page.