Welcome from the Chair, tips for new students & Winter 2023 BCEE Orientation Session

Dr. Ashutosh Bagchi, BCEE Department Chair

Dear new & returning undergraduate students,

Welcome back and, for some of you, simply welcome to our Department!

I am sure you will have a rewarding time in the coming months. Although the staff will mostly interact with you virtually and, for some very specific cases, meet with you, it is important that we remain connected on an ongoing basis.

We have set up many different resources to assist you in navigating the help available. Here are a few important steps we recommend you take to get you started:

1-      Online Communication Tools // Two (2) accounts to set up.

• If not already done, please create your @concordia email. The procedure can be found here:  https://www.concordia.ca/it/services/office-365-education.html. If your professor uses the Teams environment, you will need this to login. You will also need it to ask for Department assistance.
• Note that this is different than your @encs.concordia.ca account. You must set up both. The @encs.concordia.ca account, is what gets you on our Engineering mailing lists, on which you will receive important information and will also be your login information for our lab software. Please visit this link to know how to set this up. You will need to email help@concordia.ca, stating that you wish to pick up your “encs account”; they will guide you remotely.

***Both accounts are equally important to set up at your earliest convenience. We recommend to use the “mail forwarding” features in all these email accounts to forward messages to your personal email account that you regularly monitor, to make sure you do not miss any important messages from Concordia or our Department. Ex. Award opportunities, employment information, activities, etc.

2-     Winter 2023 Undergraduate Orientation Session // You will have two (2) orientation sessions.

-A global one from the University for which information can be found by clicking here: Orientation.

And,

-A local BCEE Department one to be held on January 11, 2023, in room EV002.260, from 10h45am to noon, after which there will be a PIZZA meet & greet for all undegraduate students (new and "old") in EV002.309, alongside a few of our BCEE Professors & Staff. (noon-2pm).

*Note that there will be no zoom recording of this session, which will take place only in person. Both contain different information. We recommend that you attend each event.  

3-      Registration & Advising - DON’T WAIT !! // Courses are on a 1st come, 1st serve basis.

Though staff is back on location to work on a three (3) day rotation basis, your 1st step to obtain help is always to “open an assistance request ticket” through this link. Although our physical reception desk is open five (5) days a week (note that lunchtime hours are closed and that the Department closes at 4h30pm), this ticket opening is necessary for us to triage your requests. This system allows us to be efficient, to help you formulate your questions and to keep providing you with the best & quickest registration assistance possible. Registration period is a rush period for everyone in BCEE every semester.

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO READ THE FORM INTRODUCTION AS IT CONTAINS OUR FAQS for this semester : click here.

Note that if you instead send a direct email to the GPD/Advisor/Assistants, your query will be redirected to this form.

If you need to follow up on your form entry because you have not heard back from anyone yet, please email bce-rec@bcee.concordia.ca and not the staff directly. This will help us focus on serving everyone we must serve before the DNE deadline. From that form, your request will be shared with the appropriate person and you will receive a reply by email within approximately 2 business days.

4- Other key resources in BCEE can be located here.

5- To see class schedules and to know if a class if offered “in-person” or “online”, please visit the “Class Schedule” here.

Wishing you all a very successful school year,

Stay safe!

Ashutosh Bagchi

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Ashutosh Bagchi, Ph.D., P.Eng. (ON), FCSCE

Professor & Chair

Department of Building, Civil & Environmental Engineering

GCS Centre for Structural Safety and Resillience (CSSR)

Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University.

1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd West, QC, H3G 1M8, Montreal, Canada.