Please direct comments to
Bill McCutcheon
and/or
Jim Carolan.
The Science programme in Physics and Astronomy is composed of two programmes, Majors and Honours. Graduates of both should have an excellent preparation for employment in many areas of business and industry where problem solving skills are valued. Graduates of the Honours programme should also be well prepared to pursue graduate studies. The Honours programme is more focussed than the Majors, and requires more high level courses; the Majors programme offers greater breadth. The undergraduate Physics program now has about 45-50 students graduating, about 60% of these being Majors students. The Honours students can pursue a Combined Honours Physics degree with Chemistry, Math, Astronomy, Computer Science, and Oceanography. Our recently established Biophysics programme is becoming increasingly popular. A Majors student can pursue a Double Majors degree with another Department in Science, or a Majors in Physics with a Minor in either a Science or an Arts subject.
In addition, the Department teaches a range of Introductory Astronomy and Physics courses to students in Science, Applied Science, Arts and several other Faculties.
The Department's commitment to broadly based teaching has been noted in several Department reviews. We continually attract to our first year programmes many talented, well prepared students. Over the past several years, the Department has participated in several teaching innovations within the Faculty, including Science One, the Integrated Science Programme, Co-operative education and the Coordinated Science Programme. The introductory courses in Astronomy for Science as well as for Arts have experienced increasing enrollments. The Department has been experimenting with promoting more active learning in the classroom. Efforts are being made to break down the ineffective passive learning mode characteristic of the impersonal large lecture.
Difficulties faced by the Department in its efforts to serve such a broad range of students are due to decline in numbers of Faculty and Staff, and decrease in infrastructure support. New hires are helping to slow the decline, but the lack of bridging funds is severely hampering the Department's ability to carry out its mission for the undergraduate programmes. The decline in infrastructure support is apparent in the facilities. It is not possible in the main lecture halls of Hennings to employ anything but the most rudimentary audio-visual teaching aids. Forty years ago, the labs in the Hebb building were state of the art, but now the style of lab in Hebb is is far from ideal for introductory courses. As an example of what can be done with proper funding, a new astronomy lab that is much more conducive to experiential learning has been constructed in Hennings.
The curriculum is constantly being reviewed and updated. Several new elective courses have been added recently. The planned changes to first year Science requirements and the proposed re-crediting of courses presents challenges to the Department. Courses such as ASTR 101 and 102 may have to scale back the very successful lab component to make the course ``fit'' the number of credits for students in various faculties. The removal of PHYS 101 as a required course for Science students will probably result in lower Physics enrollments. The relaxation of first year Science requirements may lead to a weaker background for students studying Physics in subsequent years. Partly in response to the changing first year requirements, the Department is currently restructuring the core courses PHYS 101 and 102 to incorporate biophysical applications. This is in line with the increased emphasis and expertise in biophysics and medical physics in the Department.
There is always a job market for good physicists, and in the current period, the market is particularly hot with demands from the Information Technology sector. We should be teaching and training more physicists. Attracting more bright high school students is one of the challenges; more aggressive recruiting would be helpful here. We must always strive to attract the best students to maintain the excellence of our programs. The quality of the undergraduate programme will be improved with better teaching. In addition to the exploration of new methods of teaching mentioned above, the Department should expand the training for TAs in more up to date pedagogy. The Department should develop a better sessional policy that will contribute positively to the Department's teaching programmes.