The innovative interdisciplinary curriculum is made up of 60% technical courses taught from leading experts at the Faculty of Applied Science and 40% business courses taught by faculty from UBC Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School.
Your instructors are working at the forefront of their fields. Internationally respected educators and researchers, they are collaborating with industry, government and other organizations to develop innovative solutions and make a tangible difference to our world. They are passionate about their work, committed to student achievement and excited to share their knowledge.
Learning environment
Before each class, you will independently review material through assigned readings and lecture videos. Classes are a time for active learning where you will contribute to discussions, apply your knowledge to real-world case studies and collaborate on group projects. This interactive format ensures a deeper understanding and enables you to gain practical, hands-on experience with the subject matter.
Course overview
The academic year consists of three semesters, starting in January and ending in December. The following graphic shows the technical and leadership courses you will take each semester.
Winter term courses: January to April
NAME 522: Ship Production & Industrial Engineering
This course covers topics on build strategy, shipyard layout and equipment, manufacturing techniques, outfitting and painting techniques, material properties, corrosion, welding, fatigue and composite materials.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Describe the shipbuilding industry and its sectors.
- Ensure that ship designs are production friendly and suited to each shipyards capabilities.
- Describe the ship building process including various building approaches.
- Understand shipyard layouts and assembly strategies to optimize material and work flow.
- Appreciate to cost drivers and cost estimating approaches.
- Have a thorough understanding of the various fabrication and assembly techniques used in shipbuilding.
NAME 566: Ship Dynamics & Control
Students will develop skills and understanding in equations of motion, ocean wave spectrums, response amplitude operators, seakeeping, maneuvering, stability and dynamic positioning.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Characterize a sea condition in standard terms of sea state.
- Predict the wave-induced motions of a ship.
- Present ship motions in standard tabular and graphical ways.
- Calculate the total sea-induced operability of a ship, for specific missions and operating conditions.
- Describe the principles of operation of rudders and other control surface, and apply semi-empirical models to predict performance.
- Model and analyze maneuvering behaviour of ships, including estimating turning radius, motion stability, and course keeping, using linear and non-linear methods.
- Interpret hydrodynamic derivatives and use them to describe ship characteristics.
- Describe the principles of operation of simple automatic control systems and the influence of common control strategies and parameters on ship response.
- Simulate ship dynamics and control using MATLAB and Simulink.
CIVL 435: Advanced Structural Analysis
This analysis course covers content applicable across materials and structures. Students cover topics including shear flow, shear deformation, St. Venant torsion, warping torsion, P-delta and geometric stiffness, buckling of columns and frames, cylindrical shells, beams on elastic foundation, shear wall analysis, elasto-plastic analysis. Students are also introduced to the finite element method.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Apply basic concepts for the bending of beams and plates to complex structures such as ships or buildings.
- Apply basic concepts of shear stresses in complex structures, including shear flow and shear lag effects.
- Predict buckling of columns, plates and shells as applied to ships or buildings.
- Analyze beam and plate bending and buckling using the finite element method, analytically for simple constructions and using software for complex structures.
APPP 503: Organizational Leadership
Understand the behaviour of people and groups and how this applies to management and leadership within professional organizations. This course explores motivation, group dynamics, organizational structure, leadership styles and tools for assessing organizational effectiveness. The course is collaboratively delivered with UBC Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Apply theoretical principles of leadership and organization behaviour in a variety of organizational contexts and industries.
- Diagnose organizational behaviour and people management challenges and find solutions that deliver business results and ensure employee engagement.
- Understand what it takes to build effective manager-employee relationships, given the realities of power, motivation and commitment in an organizational setting.
- Develop and present recommendations for organizational leadership challenges using the case study analysis approach.
BAEN 540: Strategy & Innovation
This course provides an introduction to the principles and frameworks of strategic management, as well as concepts surrounding the creation or expansion of innovation capabilities, within organizations. Strategic management involves analysis, planning and execution of initiatives that achieve objectives in support of organizational goals. Innovation generally involves the development of revolutionary new or evolutionary improvements to existing ideas, methods, products, services, or combinations thereof that are adopted. The course will also consider the changing nature of organizational strategy and innovation in an environment of increasing globalization, digitization and automation. Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship will be recurring themes throughout the course. The course will emphasize actionable lessons and models that students, regardless of their professional or academic backgrounds, can apply in practice to create tangible and valuable outcomes across organizational types, growth stages, and industries.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand strategic decision making and organization innovation processes.
- Analyze business situations using relevant concepts and tools.
- Understand business approaches for managing strategy and innovation programs and projects.
- Create and present plans for solutions to organizationally important challenges.
- Communicate effectively about planning and delivering on strategy and innovation.
APPP 505: Analytics & Interpretation for Applied Sciences
Professionals who can manage analytics and “big data” are highly sought after by companies across the world. This course will provide students with the opportunity to identify, interpret and utilize key analytics from real-world data sets. Graduates will feel comfortable with the latest data collection methods, measurement and presentation tools, be able to interpret data and identify trends, and understand the role of big data and predictive analytics across several different industries.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Discuss data analytics and data visualization principles and methods.
- Design and develop interactive visualizations and dashboards using Tableau.
- Use advanced features and functionalities of Tableau.
- Present and communicate analysis findings to different target audiences.
- Understand how to clean and transform different kinds of data to facilitate exploration and analysis
- Design and develop interactive visualizations and dashboards using Tableau.
- List use cases for effective visual analytics.
- Recognize issues related to ethics, privacy, governance, provenance and integrity when working with data.
Summer term courses: May to August
APPP 506: Capstone Project
The capstone project gives students experience in leading complex multidisciplinary, industry-related projects with our program-partners to present solutions and recommendations to a challenge in the Naval Architecture and Marine engineering industry.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Develop a project proposal with specific goals and objectives.
- Write a professional report based on the technical analysis of a complex Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering case study.
- Professionally communicate the key findings of a project both orally and in a written format.
- Apply the technical and business knowledge acquired from the MEL program to a real-world problem.
- Build and/or extend their professional network by interacting with industry mentor(s).
- Get insights into the Canadian marine industry.
APP 504: Business Acumen for Technical Leaders
An asset to the aspiring technical leader, business acumen is knowing how business works and applying that knowledge with the goal of business improvement. This course offers an elevated perspective of how technical skills contribute to building value in a business. The course immerses aspiring technical leaders in the practical application of core business skills and the development of six core business competencies, which are presented as modules: Managerial Accounting, Strategy and Performance, Market Evaluation, Operations Management, Negotiations and Contract Management and Business-Case Building and Valuation. This course is collaboratively delivered with UBC Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Apply theoretical principles of business in a variety of contexts.
- Analyze and discuss common business situations encountered by managers from multiple angles using the case study analysis approach.
- Appreciate the importance of each of the functional areas, as well as the inter-connectedness of business decision-making.
- Appreciate the importance of excellent written and oral communication skills.
- Understand the importance of effective team work and strong ethical standards in management.
- Plan and present effective and meaningful presentations.
Fall term courses: September to December
NAME 578: Marine Engineering
This course examines marine propulsion systems, ship engines, shafting, ship vibrations, on-board systems (piping, HVAC, electrical) and advanced propulsion systems.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Extend the study of thermodynamics through the Second Law treatment of power cycles and waste heat recovery.
- Provide an understanding of the operating principles, characteristics, and limitations of marine reciprocating engine, steam turbine, and gas turbine prime movers.
- Provide a familiarity with marine mechanical and electrical power transmission and the fundamental design principles and characteristics of mechanical gearing.
- Provide a fundamental understanding of marine electrical power generation, distribution, and use.
- Provide an understanding of and facility in matching marine power sources (prime movers, motors, and pumps) with their associated loads (propulsors, functional loads, and fluid systems).
- Provide a fundamental understanding of marine machinery vibration including excitation and mitigation.
- Provide a fundamental understanding of the characteristics and design of marine fluid systems including selection and sizing of pumps and heat exchangers.
- Understand the fundamentals of heat transfer as applied to conduction and heat exchanger selection and design.
NAME 581: Ship Design
This design project gives students experience in the preliminary design of a special-purpose ship. Students work individually and in teams, using advanced design software and databases, to design a vessel according to specified criteria.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand the Design Process.
- Understand the naval architect’s role in protecting the owner’s investment.
- Understand the naval architect’s role in protecting the marine environment.
- Understand a ship’s life cycle.
- Understand consultant cost structures.
- Understand the features that make well-written requirements.
- Determine a ship’s Principal Dimensions.
- Be familiar with Ship Work Breakdown System (SWBS).
- Develop a ship’s space requirements.
- Develop a ship’s weight estimate.
MECH 488: Intro to Ship Hydrodynamics
This course covers ship terminology, lines plans, ship hydrostatics, transverse and longitudinal stability of ships, dimensional analysis, ship resistance prediction, ship propulsion methods and propeller selection and design.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Know all the principles, terms and coefficients related to the profession of Naval Architecture.
- Develop a table of offsets and set of ship lines.
- Be proficient at calculating the draft and trim angle for a vessel under various loading conditions.
- Determine the vessel’s stability characteristics for both undamaged and damaged conditions.
- Determine the vessel’s stability characteristics when some fraction of her weight rests on the ground.
- Understand and predict a vessel’s resistance based on model test data and computer modelling.
- Be familiar with propulsion selection techniques including propeller charts.
- Be familiar with modern computer software techniques for vessel resistance prediction.
APPP 502: Sustainability & Leadership
This course helps students build skills to lead change that influences the triple bottom line and explores concepts related to sustainability, change agency systems thinking, awareness and perspective for engagement and communication, adaptive leadership, and change dynamics. It also incorporates case studies in organizational and social change. This course is collaboratively delivered with UBC Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Recognize tools, concepts, standards and frameworks used in sustainable business.
- Analyze current realities, market opportunities and issues related to sustainability across a range of industries.
- Integrate sustainability-related concepts into their own industry and/or personal experiences.
- Synthesize, apply and communicate sustainability knowledge to one’s peers.
- Apply various leadership concepts and tools into their professional practice, and in particular to sustainability-related initiatives.
Electives from UBC Sauder's Robert H. Lee Graduate School
Students can choose an elective course from UBC Sauder's Robert H. Lee Graduate School to gain greater exposure to a particular area of interest. Options include (subject to change):
BASC 550: Operations and Logistics
This course will introduce students to the key concepts and tools needed to understand and effectively manage supply chains and business operations in general. A key concept in this course is the “business process”, and managing and improving such processes.
BAMA 519: Building Brands with Purpose
This course explores the core principles of branding within the context of social and environmental responsibility including healthcare, sustainability and human rights. Fundamental marketing strategies are reinforced as they relate specifically to:
- non-profits;
- social marketing designed to change society’s behaviour;
- cause-related-marketing within the corporate sector.
BA 563: Decision Making for Managers
This course is designed to make you a better decision maker by helping you understand your weaknesses and build on your strengths in decision-making. This is an integrative course that links material from Economics, Operations, Statistics, Marketing, Psychology, Finance, and Strategy.
BAEN 580B: Special Topics in Business: Creative Destruction Lab
The Creative Destruction Lab Venture Program is a 3-credit course in entrepreneurship in which students will work with the Creative Destruction Lab West (CDL-West) team to help emerging technology and science focused start-ups. Students will become familiar with the CDL-West companies and will have the opportunity to support with market analysis, customer development, financial analysis, and other core activities related to building early stage start-ups. Students will be provided with visibility into how venture capitalists and angel investors make investment decisions.