College for Interdisciplinary Studies

The [http://www.cfis.ubc.ca College for Interdisciplinary Studies ("CFIS")] supports and cultivates interdisciplinary research and teaching at the University of British Columbia (UBC) that aims to find solutions to complex, real-world problems.

CFIS provides the infrastructure and support for hundreds of researchers in 35 schools, institutes, and centres, twelve graduate programs, and two residential colleges to collaborate with researchers in other disciplines, in industry and government, and in local and international communities to find solutions to problems that cannot be as readily solved within the confines of a single discipline.

The College was created in January 2007 out of the Interdisciplinary Studies side of UBC's [http://www.grad.ubc.ca Faculty of Graduate Studies (FOGS)] , with the interdisciplinary research units, programs, and colleges that resideded in FOGS moving to CFIS. It is notable that the first interdisciplinary unit in FoGS - the [http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/ School of Community and Regional Planning] (still in existence and now residing at CFIS) - was created in 1951, providing thematic interdisciplinary programs and teaching. Canada's first professor of planning, Peter Oberlander, became Director of SCARP in 1956. FOGS has been called a leader in interdisciplinarity in Canada by providing a formal administrative support system, joint and cross-faculty hirings, appointments, and merit reviews, and by supporting true interdisciplinary research activities in units such as the [http://www.earlylearning.ubc.ca/ Human Early Leaning Partnership] , the Fisheries Centre and [http://www.icord.org/ ICORD] .

CFIS researchers have gained international recognition for their interdisciplinary research.

Professor Daniel Pauly, Director of the Fisheries Centre and creator of the Sea Around Us Project, was awarded the 2005 International Cosmos Prize and the [http://www.environment-prize.com/ 2006 Volvo Environment Prize (with Carl Walters, another UBC Fisheries professor] , and he earned a place in the 2003 Scientific American 50 for the global impact that his work has had on protecting the environment.

Professor William Rees developed the Ecological Footprint Analysis tool in 1992 to help describe the amount of ecologically productive land, sea, and other water mass area required to sustain a population, manufacture a product, or undertake certain activities, thereby providing a new way of measuring how sustainable current economic activity is. With the fourth report by the [http://www.ipcc.ch/ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] clearly stating that man is contributing to climate change and ecological collapse, Rees's tool is now being embraced by NGO's, governments, and industry as they try to quantify man's impact on the earth.

The [http://www.cfis.ubc.ca/about/insidecfis/interdisciplinarity.html mandate] given to CFIS by the UBC Senate is to broaden FoGS' interdisciplinary focus to embrace the entire university, including undergraduate faculty and students.

One example of a jointly appointed faculty member at CFIS is [http://www.cfis.ubc.ca/page226.htm Professor Hadi Dowlatabadi] , appointed between the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Institute for Resources, Envrironment and Sustainability. Dr. Dowlatabadi's research includes public policy challenges involving scientifically complex issues, energy, the environment and public health, and communicable and vector-borne diseases, problems that cut across narrowly defined disciplines and modalities of research. Other themes and problems tackled by CFIS researchers include health, sustainability, cross-cultural policy analysis, global issues, applied ethics, feminism, finding a common language for scientists, and the human-computer relationship.