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The study of electricity began at Queen's in 1894, with a special series of lectures and, as the calendar boasted, "demonstrations of this wonderful form of energy...on telegraphy, telephony, electric lighting, and the driving of machinery." Queen's first real specialist in electricity, L.W. Gill, arrived at the University in 1900, and is generally considered the founder of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Electrical studies have changed drastically since then, but the Department's late Victorian goal to study "electricity in all its variations" still holds. The Department now teaches and conducts research in such fields as communications, fibre-optics, micro-electronics, power and transportation, electromagnetism, biomedicine, and electronic signal and image processing. There are approximately 25 full-time faculty in the Department, which has been located, since 1987, in Walter Light Hall [named after one of the Department's most successful graduates, Walter Light, former CEO of Northern Telecom, and Chair of Queen's Board of Trustees (1985-1990)], and the Stewart-Pollack Wing of Fleming Hall. The Department is part of the Faculty of Applied Science.

Latin and Greek have been subjects of instruction and research at Queen's since the University held its first classes in March of 1842. The first professor the University ever hired, in fact, was a Professor of Classics, the Reverend Peter Colin Campbell. Classics were at the core of the Arts curriculum throughout the 19th century and were considered indispensable to a complete education. Early on, the focus was exclusively on Latin and Greek grammar and translation, but by the 1860s, there were lectures on "subjects connected with Grecian Literature and History," and by 1900, professors were enlivening their classes with social commentary and literary appreciation. As the century progressed, the Department lost much of its central position at the University, as educational philosophy and ideals changed. But there has been a strong revival of interest in recent years. Undergraduate registration has increased dramatically since 1980, and the number of MA students has grown tenfold. The Department has a number of permanent faculty, and their areas of interest include Greek archaeology (Attica, Crete, Peleponnesus), Greek philosophy and literature, Roman history, and Latin literature. Women's history, Japanese art, and comparative studies of Canadian literature have also become research interests in recent years. The Department is located in John Watson Hall, and is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science.
Adapted from the "Queen's Encyclopedia".

Civil Engineering first appeared in a Queen's Course Calendar in the 1850s; the earliest mention of any engineering courses at the University. However, these courses were only the result of wishful thinking; Queen's had neither the facilities, nor the professors to teach the subject at the time and, not surprisingly, no students registered for the courses. The real beginning of Civil Engineering had to wait until the establishment of the Queen's-affiliated Ontario School of Mining and Agriculture in 1893. Robert Carr-Harris, a professor at the Royal Military College, taught the first courses in the subject that year, coming over from RMC for several hours each week. Work in the Department originally focussed on structural and railway engineering and surveying, with hydraulics and highway engineering being added in the early decades of this century. Today, faculty in the Department teach and conduct research in five main areas of engineering: Environmental, Geotechnical, Hydrotechnical, Structural, and Transportation; utilizing mathematical modelling with computer simulation, physical model studies in various laboratories, and field studies. One of the Department's most visible activities is the Survey School for first year students after final exams, during which Queen's is crowded with students taking physical measurements of the campus. The Department, which has close to 20 full-time faculty, has been housed in Ellis Hall since 1958.

Queen's first offered courses in chemistry in 1854, as part of the curriculum in the then-newly founded Faculty of Medicine. It became a separate department in the Faculty of Arts and Science in 1858, when George Lawson was appointed Queen's Professor of Natural History and Chemistry. The Department has also offered a degree program in Engineering Chemistry for students in the Faculty of Applied Science, since the Faculty was established in 1893. It offered a degree program in the slightly different field of chemical engineering from ca. 1900, until a separate department for the discipline was established in Applied Science in 1922. Its tradition of serious research dates from the 1920s, when original research became a major requirement in MA and MSc theses. The modern era of research began in the 1950s, when the first group of PhD students enrolled in the Department. There are now more than 25 full-time faculty. They teach and conduct research in the traditional areas of analytical, inorganic, organic, physical, and theoretical chemistry. There are also strong interdisciplinary programs in bioorganic, bioinorganic, biophysical, and polymer chemistry, as well as in catalysis and chemical physics. The Department has occupied Gordon Hall since 1911, expanding into the attached Gordon Annex in 1949, and the Frost Wing in 1962. The Department moved out of the Gordon-Frost Wing in the Spring of 2002, and into the new chemistry building, known as Chernoff Hall.

Formal studies in art began at Queen's University at Kingston, in 1933, when Goodridge Roberts was named the University's first resident artist. He was succeeded in 1936, by Andre Bieler, a prominent Canadian painter, who became the founding Director of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 1957. In 1963, a Department of Art History was established at the University, with Gerald Finley as its first Head. Six years later, the Department branched out into studio instruction, launching a four-year studio program leading to a Bachelor of Art Education, subsequently changed to a Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA). Students studying for this degree can specialize in painting, sculpture, or print making. A special feature of the Department was the addition, in 1970, of the Summer School on the Art and Architecture of Venice, which continues to run in Italy every summer. A Master of Art Conservation program was established in 1974. At the same time, the Department changed its name, becoming simply the Department of Art. Since 1979, it has also offered an MA program in Art History. The studio and art history components are located in Ontario Hall, while the Art Library and a Visual Resources Unit, containing an important collection of slides and photographs, are now located in Stauffer Library. In 2001, a donation from benefactress, Dr. Winifred Ross, enabled the Department to set up the Digital Imaging Centre, in which students can compose and scan their artistic works into digital format for computer and Internet-based research. The Art Conservation program is located in the Agnes Etherington Extension. There are about twenty (20) full-time faculty in the Department, which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science.