Registration
Your registration date will be emailed to you approximately 1 week before registration opens. You can also find your registration date by clicking this link.
We will send all declared FNIS/FNEL majors and minors information about CIS registration process and procedures in advance of registration. If you don’t receive this email, contact the CIS main office (cis.program@ubc.ca) to ensure you are on our major or minor listserv.
As FNIS and FNEL are small programs, our special topics and language courses are offered on a rotating basis, depending on faculty availability. We always prioritize required courses, but occasionally they will need to be offered every second year. If you are concerned about your ability to complete your degree due to a missing course, please contact the main office (cis.program@ubc.ca) as soon as possible. Upcoming Summer Session is announced in January and Winter Session is announced in April.
We restrict a limited number of seats for our majors and minors to ensure that they are able to register in core courses before they fill up. If these seats are not all filled, we release the restriction in early August to allow non-majors and minors to register in the courses.
As FNIS and FNEL are undergraduate programs, our courses are restricted to ensure that graduate students do not register in undergrad sections. This will not impact any interested undergrad student who would like to register in the course.
FNEL and FNIS are undergraduate programs and the main sections of our courses are for undergraduates only. However, we do offer a limited amount of graduate sections for our courses each year - either through an FNIS 501 course code or an FNEL 448 code. Any graduate student who registers in an undergraduate section will be removed from the course and instructed to follow up with the CIS Main Office (cis.program@ubc.ca) to discuss graduate options.
As we are unable to accept every interested graduate student, we ask that you submit a short statement of interest explaining why you are interested in the course and not to register yourself without being in contact with the CIS Main Office (cis.program@ubc.ca). Interested graduate students can see our graduate process here for FNIS and here for FNEL.
If you are interested in registering in an FNEL course but you don’t meet the pre-requisites or co-requisites please send an email detailing your request to both the instructor and cis.program@ubc.ca. Many of the co-requisites for FNEL are flexible so please do reach out if you are interested in the course.
If you are an FNEL major or minor and are missing pre-requisites for a required course and are concerned about the progress of your degree, please be in touch with the CIS Associate Director Tanya Bob (tanya.bob@ubc.ca) to discuss your options going forward.
If you are interested in registering in an upper level core course for the FNIS major and minor (FNIS 300, 310, 320, and 400) you can apply through our pre-requisite/co-requisite process. The deadline for these is in mid-July, and any late requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis.
A pre-requisite waiver will allow you to take an upper level course without the pre-requisite, whereas a co-requisite waiver will allow you to take the pre-requisite and the upper-level course concurrently.
FNIS upper level special topics (codes FNIS 401 and above) have a recommended pre-requisite of any lower-level FNIS course or experience with Indigenous content. You are able to register in these courses with instructor permission – please reach out to the faculty member teaching the course and they will be able to approve you. Once you have obtained instructor permission, please send this to cis.program@ubc.ca for assistance with registration.
Please note that if the course is full, faculty approval will not push you ahead of the waitlist.
CIS sometimes offers condensed courses in the summer session. These courses are created to allow students with community, family, and work commitments to take credit courses while still maintaining their other responsibilities. These courses are intensive as they pack a full curriculum into 1-to-3 weeks. You can find the course dates on the SSC. Please note that the add/drop deadlines for these courses differs from the regular sessions.
The ACL and RCL are the lists of approved external electives that can be counted towards your FNIS/FNEL major or minor. The ACL is the list of approved courses for the FNIS program, and the RCL is for FNEL. The main difference between the lists is that all Linguistics courses will count towards the FNEL degree and are listed on the RCL.
The Summer Session ACL/RCL is published in late February and the Winter Session ACL/RCL is published in late May.
CIS courses will all have a mix of synchronous and asynchronous learning, but all will be offered online. Important information about winter session term 1 courses is hosted on the Faculty of Arts COVID-19 information page.
Waitlists
For lower level CIS courses we offer official waitlist sections through the SSC. These are differentiated from the actual course as they have the section number “WL1”. If the course is full and/or blocked, please register in the waitlist section. If a spot opens up in the course, the Main Office staff will enroll students in the course in the order that they registered in the waitlist. If you are no longer interested in the course, please drop the waitlist. Please note that if you drop the waitlist and re-register yourself in it, you will be placed at the bottom of the list.
If a course without an official waitlist section is full and/or blocked, please email the Main Office at cis.program@ubc.ca with your full name, student number, and the course you are interested in and you will be added to the waitlist.
CIS waitlists are updated every 1-2 business days, however this may take longer during busier times. If students are registered on a waitlist through the SSC, the students will be automatically registered and then informed of the change.
For courses where the waitlist is maintained by the Main Office, once a spot opens up we will contact the first student on the list. Generally, this student will have 1 – 2 business days to respond and confirm their interest for the Main Office to add them. If there is no response, we will move to the next student on the list. As waitlists can move quickly it is important that you check your emails frequently during this time.
To find out your placement on the waitlist you can email the Main Office at cis.program@ubc.ca. Registration moves quickly in the weeks leading up to the term, so we recommend waiting until closer to the start of term to reach out. We will always notify you when you are next in line, and if you are registered in an official waitlist section through the SSC, we will notify once we have moved you into the course section.
Please note that waitlist sections through the SSC will count towards your total available credits for the year, and will hold the space of the course. So, if you are already registered in the maximum number of credits for the year or if you have a conflicting course you will not be able to register.
If you were unable to register in one of our core courses and are concerned about the progress of your degree, please email cis.program@ubc.ca detailing your concerns and the courses you need to take. It is important to be in touch early if you have concerns about registration or course planning.
If you are concerned about graduation or the progress of your degree, please be in touch with the CIS Associate Director, tanya.bob@ubc.ca to set up an appointment to discuss your options going forward.