Students, faculty and staff from the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP)

CFIS is home to 10 graduate programs and over 600 graduate students, with 77 tenure and tenure-track faculty members teaching 134 graduate courses and 47 undergraduate courses.

Our 10 graduate programs are comprised of four programs housed within research units (Asia Pacific Policy Studies (MAAPPS),  Planning, Resource Management and Environmental Studies (RMES), and Women's and Gender Studies), and six "interfaculty" programs (Bioinformatics, Cell and Developmental Biology, Genetics, Genome Science and Technology, Neuroscience, and Interdisciplinary Oncology) that exist on their own, and are unique to CFIS. All ten programs strive to discover excellence and innovation at the interface of traditional disciplines. These programs are not only at the cutting edge (as evidenced by their tri-council training program grants), but attract high quality graduate students, with a high proportion competing successfully in the last two years for Trudeau awards, Vanier scholarships and Canada Graduate Scholarships.

One distinguishing characteristic of CFIS is that faculty members are often jointly appointed. Of tenured and tenure-track faculty members, 35 of 73 (or 48%) are jointly appointed between two or more academic units and departments. Of these 35 joint appointments, 28 are held between CFIS and another UBC Faculty. The total FTE count in CFIS is 50.

While the volume of undergraduate teaching has risen over the last year, most of the courses taught by CFIS faculty are at the graduate level since CFIS does not host undergraduate programs. Recently a small working group of associate deans involved with undergraduate education identified ways in which CFIS faculty can enhance undergraduate learning across UBC. Some exciting prospects were identified, and this has now been extended into discussions with the Office of the Vice President, Students about CFIS contributions to “enriched educational experiences.”