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Mechanical Engineering

Honours guidelines

The project course MECH 498 Honours Thesis is for students with strong academic records. You may take it as a part of your required fourth year technical electives.

You must have completed all third-year courses with a minimum GPA of 6.0. Exceptions are only granted under special circumstances, please contact your academic adviser for assistance.

Applying

You must find a suitable faculty member to supervise you. Work with them to fill out and submit a pro forma registration form to the Undergraduate secretary.

The complete application must be received in the department office at least 6 working days before the last day for adding courses in the term MECH 498 will be taken.

Your application will go through multiple levels of approval.

  1. The Undergraduate program director will review your application for content and pre-requisites. It is then passed to the office of the Associate dean undergraduate programs.
  2. The Associate dean undergraduate programs has final say of whether you will be approved or not.
    • You will be contacted by their office regarding your approval status.
    • Depending on how busy the Engineering undergraduate office is, it may take 1 - 2 weeks to hear from them.

Completion

You can take MECH 498 in any term that works for you and your supervisor. MECH 498 may be taken over 1 or 2 terms in any of the following configurations:

  • May to August (summer term)
  • September to December (fall term)
  • January to April (spring term)
  • September to April (winter session)

Please note: September to April is the only 8-month term allowed; no other combination is possible.

Deliverables & grading

You’ll meet weekly with your supervisor to discuss project progress. You must submit a midterm report (research proposal) to them no later than the fifth week of the term. Your supervisor may specify its format and an earlier deadline.

The final project report will be due on the last day of examinations in the respective term. Your supervisor will set the format of the final report. It is expected to follow a standard thesis format (introduction, problem statement, literature review and previous work, methodology, results, discussion, recommendations for future work and references).

All students in MECH 498 will present their findings in 10-minute presentations during the period between the last day of classes and the last day of exams each term. Students who take MECH 498 over the September to April period will present with the January to April students.

Your supervisor will complete the grading. The final mark will consist of:

  • 20% on midterm progress report
  • 20% on presentation (10% on technical content and 10% on presentation delivery), assigned by all professors who attend the presentation, including the supervisor
  • 60% on the final report