SCARP Futuring

As everyone returned to the campus for the new academic year in September 2011 it rapidly became clear that major decisions effecting the future of SCARP were looming before us. Discussions about the continuing role and membership of the College for Interdisciplinary Studies (CFIS), SCARP’s institutional home since 2007, that had been unfolding over the preceding two years, were coming to a head and it was evident that the School would likely need to make difficult decisions about moving to one of the other UBC faculties. Coming at a time when the School was launching a search for a new Director, to take over when Penny Gurstein steps down in July 2012, and two of the senior faculty would be retiring after 40-year careers (Bill Rees and myself), the decisions before us appeared all the more challenging and critical.

As we began to discuss how best to address these issues I wrote several emails on component topics and because they were interrelated they increasingly began to build on each other. To make it easy to access these messages and follow the thread I have posted them on my web site and provided links to them below.

SCARP Futures Sept. 21, 2011 Sent to the School listserv; elaborates on the issues and challenges that I saw in prospect for SCARP and options that should be considered.

SCARP’s Vision: Use It or Lose It Sept. 25, 2011 Sent to School listserv; summarizes my perspective on the history of creating SCARP’s vision and how we have used it, along with suggesting criteria that could be applied in assessing this experience and in refreshing the vision and our use of it.

Sharing SCARP Views on Planning: Past, Present and Future Oct.1, 2011 Sent to School listserv; stimulated by John Friedmann’s noon-hour presentation to the School, I suggested it would be valuable to hear the perspectives of other faculty members on planning past, present and future that come out of their experiences and the implications each of them saw for SCARP’s future vision, masters and doctoral programs, and hiring a new Director and faculty members.

Forming and Formalizing SCARP Decisions Oct.6, 2011 Sent to members of School Management Committee (SMC); summarized the history of establishing and using the procedures for forming and formalizing SCARP decisions since they were introduced in 1999 and suggested the need to re-affirm them and put them in writing so that they can be clearly understood and faithfully employed in future decision making , in particular those relating to SCARP’s future.

SCARP’s Vision In Words & Keeping Our Word Oct 10, 2011 Sent to School listserv; draws attention to critically important  and ignored elaborations on the meaning and implications of SCARP’s existing Vision and Mission statements and argues that more fundamental questions go beyond the words used to the reasons why the statements are not consistently and continuously used.

Refresh and Do Not Abandon the Sustainability Vision At This Time Oct 10, 2011 Sent to School listserv; elaborates my three reasons for refreshing rather than abandoning the sustainability focus of the SCARP vision during the current tumultuous times and makes recommendations on how to move forward now in refreshing it.

SCARP Strategic Planning 2008-’09 Oct 30, 2011 Sent to School listserv; provides links to the Google web site that we created in 2008-’09 to conduct a SWOT analysis of SCARP by faculty, students, alumni and practitioners. I also provided links to an overview of the process and the preliminary and fuller analysis of results.

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