Preface: STRATEGY

Please direct comments to Jess Brewer.

A condensed version of our Unit Plan, consisting of this Preface, an Introduction, a Table of Contents for the full document and an Executive Summary, will be delivered to the Dean of Science on Wed. 21 Feb 2001, at the same time as the unabridged version is made available on the departmental Web site at

http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/up/

where an ``active map'' will display various Chapters and Sections when their respective regions of the ``map'' are clicked on. For those who prefer to inspect a more standard linear text version, this is also available at

http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/up/UP

where a full PostScript file can be downloaded by clicking on the title. This completes the initial formation stage of our Unit Plan (UP).

However, to view this milestone as our ultimate goal would render the exercise meaningless or worse. If our own UP is treated as a ``conclusion'' and cited in departmental meetings as a reason for rejecting new proposals or not exploiting unforeseen opportunities, it will have done us more harm than good. If, on the other hand, our UP engenders an ongoing discussion of our missions and strategies, it will have helped us overcome the natural tendency of the physical scientist to work in isolation and encouraged us to develop our equally natural tendency to share and refine ideas.

How can we create a dynamic UP in whose evolution everyone has an opportunity to participate? How can we allow for individual contributions at those unexpected moments of inspiration and still maintain a stable document which expresses a consensus? In particular, how could we submit a succinct, eloquent and well integrated paper version by mid-February 2001 and still satisfy these long-range goals?

Information Technology (IT) provides a means for developing and maintaining the dynamic version of our UP as a Web site where everyone can easily see what others have had to say and respond (or not) accordingly. We have set this up as a WebCT site for several reasons:

• Our aim is a sort of asynchronous, electronic version of an ongoing departmental meeting. Although such meetings are hardly ``secure'', they do involve some discussions that we would like to treat as ``private'', and a normal public Web site is visible to the entire world. WebCT provides a variety of control over Web access and so satisfies our need for privacy as well as our desire for accessibility.

• Some of us are already familiar with WebCT from using it in our courses; others may well wish to use it too. The effort of learning to use an unfamiliar technology is thus not ``wasted'' on this exercise alone.

• WebCT includes numerous tools for maintenance of content and structure, and promises to be a long-lived Web environment; thus it is plausible that this effort will not have to be abandoned or reproduced very soon.

We have now massaged the UP into a mutually acceptable form on our departmental WebCT site and the UP itself has been exported to a public Web site on our departmental server (see above) where it can be inspected by anyone who wishes to know the latest Plans for our Unit. The February draft document has been distilled from that version and is now presented as a ``snapshot of a work in progress'' which will next migrate back to the WebCT environment where it can continue to evolve toward improved future versions, which will periodically be released to the public, and so on . . . .