The following proposal tabled by Gordon Semenoff is an example of the sorts of radical revisions often debated by our Department. It addresses only the Physics curriculum but its consequences would be far-reaching. It is included here to emphasize that we are not content to merely propagate the status quo, but are always seeking to identify potential changes which, if deemed workable and desirable by the Department, might help us do a better job of Undergraduate Education.
The duties of an undergraduate program in a major scientific discipline such as Physics at a large public university such as the University of British Columbia are twofold. First, it should provide an education for the science student which prepares her or him for a productive role in Society at the Bachelor of Science level. Second, for those students with the high degree of talent and motivation such that they might become scientists themselves, it should provide a pathway to a good post graduate education. These are the two needs that the undergraduate teaching programs of the Department of Physics and Astronomy are designed to serve. Both of these needs have evolved somewhat and changes in our curriculum, emphasis and teaching style are inevitable to take into account this evolution.
The undergraduate program presently has two main streams, Physics Major and Physics Honors.
The Physics Major program is designed give the student a liberal education with some degree of concentration in Physics. It is intended primarily for the student who will enter the job market at the Bachelor of Science level. It is also a reasonable preparation for professional schools and those wanting to pursue a career in science education, and sometimes for graduate school in engineering, computer science or physics. The program has a small core of required physics and mathematics courses and substantial space for options which allow a student to obtain a broad, liberal education or to develop a second major.
The Honors program has traditionally been the venue for the student with the degree of talent and motivation that they have to potential to someday be research scientists themselves. The program is designed to prepare students for entry to graduate schools. The curriculum for such a program has a reasonably standard content which is adhered to fairly uniformly in North American universities. There is a large amount of material that a student destined for graduate school must master and this material practically fills the teaching hours of an undergraduate degree.
There is also the Honors on Biophysics program which is designed to address the special needs of a student who want to pursue a career in biophysics, medical physics or bio-engineering.
There are also combined honors programs with Computer Science,
Mathematics and Chemistry.
These programs have somewhat lighter requirements for Physics courses
and are designed to prepare students
for graduate work in either subject.
Over the last ten years, these
have been very popular with students.
The division between the Major and Honors streams is now not as sharp as it once was. The trend over the last few years has been toward a gradual integration of the two programs. This is partially driven by manpower constraints and has involved the amalgamation of courses which were once offered exclusively to one or the other group.
Along with this evolution, the Honors program has been re-worked somewhat during the past few years. There has been an attempt to streamline the teaching to free up some time for students to either broaden their education or to pursue specialized topics in modern physics. Streamlining has occurred both in physics courses where two mechanics courses were compressed into one and in the mathematics courses which are offered to physics students. In that case, a long and rather slow moving pair of second year calculus courses were compressed into one course, and some of the material re-distributed among some of the other required math courses. The result has been an opening up of several spaces for options in the fourth year of the honors program. We have encouraged undergraduate students to use this opportunity to either accelerate their specialization by taking graduate courses of interest to them or to develop a second major, examples of which are applied mathematics, computer science, medical physics or astronomy.
The Honors in Biophysics program was recently created to address the demand by students for an education in that subject. Both the research world and the commercial job market have a need for manpower with a biological physics education. The Department has recognized this need and an undergraduate program which addresses it is now in place.
The plans of the Department for the near future involve radical changes to the way that it teaches physics. We believe that, given sufficient resources and latitude, we can make significant innovations. These innovations should make the UBC experience the very best that a science student can get. Concrete plans are listed below:
One of the goals of our planned curriculum reform is to give the undergraduate student much more access to the research programs of the Department.
The Physics and Astronomy Department of the University of British Columbia has probably the most diverse array of research programs of any such Department in Canada. Many of these programs are among the strongest in the country and some are among the strongest in the world. This gives it a strategic advantage over its competitors. It can offer a student access to high quality, cutting edge research on a very wide variety of topics and in an environment where real discoveries are being made. This advantage is currently utilized in the form of a senior year thesis project for Honors physics students. During their fourth year, students are required to undertake an independent research project under the guidance of a faculty member.
The Department plans to revise its curriculum so that it can offer undergraduate students a greater direct involvement in its ongoing research programs.
This is a proposal to combine all of the teaching of Physics Major and Honors students into a common core of courses. This also will either eliminate the Physics Major program entirely or make the distinction between a Major and Honors degree one based on marks or some other simple to manage criterion.
This is a proposal for a major streamlining of the classroom teaching programs of the Department. All undergraduate physics teaching beyond the freshman year would be a small number of core courses which should be taken by both Majors and Honors program students.
The streamlining of teaching will liberate time in the Majors and Honors programs for students to participate in the research of the department. It will also liberate time of faculty members. This time will be used in supervising research projects and mentoring students.
The department has already developed an Honors in Biophysics program to address the demand for a biophysics education. It also plans to develop a Computational Physics program. Computational Physics will be presented mostly through project based learning.