Post Cards from Congress – Day 3: Thinking Pan-Canadian

There are lots of pan-Canadian scholarly associations at Congress. There are lots of book sellers and publishers at Congress. There are lots of individual scholars talking about their projects at Congress. And there are three pan-Canadian organizations that support them with a presence in the book fair, the agora of Congress: Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) and ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR). Our good friends at the Canada Foundation for Innovation are also here but without a booth.

The Governor General spoke of the Community Campus Collaboration Initiative when he opened Congress with his Big Thinking lecture. The CCC Initiative is a big tent stretching across the country. It is big enough to welcome RIR along with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, Philanthropic Foundations of Canada, United Way Centraide Canada, SSHRC, Imagine Canada, Community Based Research Canada, CFHSS, Campus Community Partnerships for Health and Social Innovation Generation.  A very pan-Canadian tent.

Last night RIR, SSHRC and CFHSS enjoyed dinner with University of Victoria, hosts of Congress 2013. We spoke of the need to bring the country to Victoria and build on the efforts of Congress 2012 that has a theme of social innovation and collaboration. UVic hosted Community University Expo 2008. UVic is home to Office of Community Based Research and a Knowledge Mobilization Unit. We are looking to UVic to create its own big tent not only for all of Canada but for its local communities as well.

Post Cards from Congress – Day 2

Day 2 was a day of connecting and re-connecting.

We first welcomed Bojan Fürst to the ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche booth at Congress.  In 2011, Bojan joined the Harris Centre at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador as manager of Knowledge Mobilization. You can read more about Bojan in the Harris Centre’s newsletter The Regional.  In Bojan’s words, “As a manager of knowledge mobilization my job is to connect the needs of Newfoundland and Labrador communities and regions with the expertise that resides at Memorial. I am essentially a matchmaker and my tool of trade is our opportunity, research and expertise online database yaffle.ca. Yaffle is a true repository of ingenuity in this province. It is an essential component of a network of economic development practitioners, policy makers, experts, students and community champions. Yaffle would not be what it is without its users, so I do encourage all of you to register an account, and make it stronger with your own expertise and innovative ideas added to our collective knowledge.” Yaffle has been featured in a number of stories in Mobilize This! and we are pleased and proud to have a Yaffle banner and a Yaffle expert in the RIR booth.

Welcome Bojan, who fits right in not just as a knowledge broker but as someone who is always laughing and enjoying life.

Reconnecting with colleagues is always a joy of Congress. SSHRC, Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences, Centre for Community Based Research… all great colleagues who are great to reconnect to and are great knowledge mobilization colleagues you need to know to help connect your research with non-academic partners.

Don’t forget to save the dates of June 12-15, 2013, in Corner Brook Newfoundland for the next Community-University Expo.

Post Cards from Congress – Day 1

Congress Day 1 was a Governor General Day. See our blog on this announcing His Excellency’s appearance at Congress. As mentioned in the Governor General’s media advisory, ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) has been working with SSHRC and United Way Centraide Canada to develop the Community-Campus Collaboration’s Initiative.  In his Keynote Address to Congress titled “A True Democracy of Knowledge”, his Excellency said the CCC Initiative “is quite simply a superb initiative. It will help us ensure that social innovation is a key component of Canada’s innovation landscape. This initiative also provides us with a catalytic vehicle to apply knowledge and develop experiential learning.” He quoted from Boyer’s book, Scholarship Reconsidered which presents some directions towards a true democracy of knowledge. Two decades ago Boyer wrote about the scholarship of discovery, the scholarship of integration, the scholarship of application and the scholarship of teaching.

These different scholarships map well onto the Community-Campus Collaborations Initiative. Community based research is an important part of engaged discovery. Community service learning and experiential education are important parts of engaged teaching. Knowledge mobilization underpins engaged discovery and all three are critical for the scholarship of integration.

His Excellency also attended a panel offered by the Canada Foundation for Innovation that featured Yves Maufette, Vice-recteur à la recherche et à la creation, RIR-UQAM. The panel examined changing models of service to communities in Canada’s universities. Very engaged. Very knowledge mobilization.

Day 1 of Congress was a very engaged and engaging day.

Governor General Returns to Waterloo for Keynote Address / Le gouverneur général revient à Waterloo pour une allocution

University of Waterloo is known more for industry-associated innovation despite many local community engaged initiatives. But when the Governor General returns to the university where he used to be President he will be speaking on collaboration for social innovation thanks in part to RIR.

L’Université de Waterloo est plus connue pour l‘innovation associée à l’industrie, malgré de nombreuses initiatives communautaires locales engagées. Mais lorsque le gouverneur général du Canada revient à l’université qu’il présidait, il s’exprime sur la collaboration au service de l’innovation sociale, grâce, entre autres, au RIR.

Led by York University, ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) has exhibited at Congress every year since 2007 – see our post cards and other reports from Congress 2011 posted on Mobilize This! This year Congress is in Waterloo and will be opened by His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada. Nice indeed but what does he have to do with knowledge mobilization? This year, a lot.

As announced on May 3, 2012, by the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS, organizers of Congress), “The Governor General believes that the creation and sharing of knowledge is critical if we are to effectively and equitably address today’s complex, global issues. It is hoped that the discussion of cross-sector collaboration and social innovation at Congress 2012 will encourage students, researchers, employees and citizens alike, as we strive for greater prosperity and quality of life for all.”  CFHSS’s announcement also referenced RIR. “CFHSS has been working with the United Way of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and ResearchImpact, which are engaged in a joint project, the Community-Campus Connections (CCC) Initiative. Its purpose is to support a culture of collaboration and to marry the resources of communities with those of post-secondary institutions to address persistent social and economic challenges Canadians face today”.

Community-campus collaborations. Cross sector collaboration. Social Innovation. All very knowledge mobilization. His Excellency will be opening Congress with a Big Thinking lecture that will be informed, in part, by the work of the CCC Initiative, a year-long collaboration by York University on behalf of RIR, SSHRC and United Way-Centraide Canada. We are delighted that His Excellency will be speaking on this topic as he opens Congress 2012.

RIR will be there and you will receive daily post cards from Congress posted on this blog.

post cards from congress – day 4

Day 4 started out with Chad Gaffield, President of SSHRC speaking about Research On the Digital Economy.  Researchimpact-RéseauImpactRecherche actively tweeted his remarks (a portion of which are shown below) throughout his talk which was followed by presentation from a number of the principal investigators of grants from the SSHRC Synthesis in the Digital Economy program.  These researchers presented their findings and recommendations for a Canadian digital economy. Stay tuned to SSHRC for a synthesis of the syntheses and for all the syntheses to be posted.  In the meantime, see the synthesis paper that involved David Phipps of ResearchImpact-York.  The last chapter of this paper reviewed the intersection of digital technologies, knowledge mobilization and the engaged campus.

The afternoon featured a tweet up of some KMb/Congress/RIR tweeps including @jovanevery, @mcshanahan and @qui_oui (left to right in the picture below) with @Kmbeing joining by skype.  Thanks to @qui-oui for organizing this.  Don’t forget the KMb at Congress tweet chat June 1 at noon Eastern.  More information can be found here.

After 42 visits and 24 substantive KMb conversations we headed to the Lobster cook and Kitchen Party.  Good music, good lobster and great company with friends from SSHRC and Johanne Provencal from Simon Fraser University who was co-author of the synthesis paper linked above. Great end to an invigorating day.

Re-imagining the ivory tower / Reconcevoir la tour d’ivoire

By David Phipps (ResearchImpact, York)

KMb is enhancing transparency and access to universities but as we work hard at engaging we remain struck in silos inside the ivory tower.

La mobilisation des connaissances accroît la transparence et l’accès aux universités. Toutefois, malgré le travail acharné que nous accomplissons en ce sens, nous demeurons prisonniers des silos à l’intérieur de la tour d’ivoire.

Recently I attended a curling bonspiel in Ottawa and because my team lost as soon as they could I ended up on twitter and saw this @fedcan tweet

Good morning all! We’re live blogging @fedcan‘s annual conference this morning at blog.fedcan.ca

The Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences (FedCan) was holding their Annual Conference,  which featured a talk by SSHRC President, Chad Gaffield. The theme of the conference was “The Humanities Paradox: More Relevant and Less Visible Than Ever?” and the title of Chad’s talk was “Re-imagining Scholarship in the Digital Age“, both of which had a theme of exploring the relevance of academic research outside of the academy. Chad’s talk was wide ranging but for anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing Chad speak as many times as I have his observations were familiar. They were all linked by the theme of “re-imagining”, imaging a new paradigm of scholarship that is emerging on campuses across Canada. Specifically, Chad spoke of re-imagining in three areas: teaching, research and campus-community connections.

Teaching:

• The old “professor push” method of teaching is evolving into a student centred, inquiry based method of learning. Text heavy, power point slides are being replaced by image heavy and digital rich media. Students are exploring problems rather than being told solutions.

Research:

• Researchers are pursing horizontal connections across different ways of knowing. This means that researchers are not only reaching out to other scholarly disciplines but they are embracing community, Aboriginal and other traditions of knowledge.

It’s official! SSHRC announces Public Outreach Grant to support Knowledge Mobilization for Climate Change project.

If you live in a municipality in the GTA you’ll be pleased to know that municipal employees will now have access to academic research and expertise to inform decisions that affect your life.

We previously told you about an exciting YorkU knowledge mobilization climate change project.  In that post, Chandra Sharma of TRCA underscored the importance of these efforts by saying, “”Advancing climate research and knowledge is key to addressing municipal needs to address impacts of changing climate.” Even though we announced the project in June we are delighted to let you know that this project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).  SSHRC has officially announced the results of its Public Outreach grant competition, awarding $138,700 to Karen Kraft Sloan (Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies) and David Phipps (Director, Research Services and Knowledge Exchange) for this Knowledge Mobilization for Climate Change project. This grant, details for which may be found on SSHRC’s website here, has enabled an innovative large-scale collaboration in the area of climate change research.

Thanks to this funding, York University’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit has been able to engage the municipalities of Toronto, York Region, Mississauga, Peel, and Durham, as well as the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

(TRCA) and the Association for Canadian Educational Resources (The Gateway Project) to make York climate change research and expertise more accessible and policy relevant. York University’s Office of the Vice President Research and Innovation has generously contributed funding towards this project, which allowed the hiring of a project coordinator to work in the Knowledge Mobilization Unit.

“This grant gives us an unprecedented opportunity  to apply York’s diverse body of climate change research and expertise to public policy and practice” said Karen Kraft Sloan, the Principal Investigator for the grant. “I am eager to see the results that emerge from this unique collaboration”.

This award comes as part of the exciting news that York University’s researchers, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows have been able to secure over $10 million through SSHRC grants this year. More details and the full listing of York SSHRC awards may be found in the Y-File story here.

Message to SSHRC: as you remodel the house don’t forget the foundation

Renovations are all the rage. Witness the Home Improvement Tax Credit (I’m looking forward to my $1,350 that will help pay for the new furnace, air conditioner and water heater), all the DIY shows on Home & Garden Channel and the boom in stores like Home Depot, Rona and Lowes. SSHRC has jumped on the reno bandwagon. The first time I heard about the new SSHRC Program Architecture was at the KIS/Cluster meeting in Ottawa on October 23-24, 2009 (see our blog post on that meeting). Since then SSHRC has released increasing amounts of information to SSHRC academic leaders (December 2009) and to research administrators in a CAURA webinar (January 29, 2010) and on March 1, 2010, Chad Gaffield released the new architecture and draft call for applications for consultation.

KMb practitioners take note: you no longer have to pose as researchers

SSHRC has retooled their programming into 3 broad categories of insight (= research), talent (= training) and connections (= knowledge mobilization). The three are not mutually exclusive, in fact, in many constructions of SSHRC funded scholarly endeavours they are intrinsically linked (think of a CURA which fosters engaged research, training and KMb). Moving from a prescriptive, program directed mode of grant seeking, SSHRC is allowing applicants to define the funding package that fits their own scholarship within some very broad frameworks.

KMb community take note: there is funding for KMb

Whether you want to hold a small workshop, publish a journal, develop a KMb tool kit or create a national framework for community engaged scholarship, there’s a welcome mat out for you. If you wish to study the science of KMb, that’s research (sorry, insight) but if you want to do KMb that’s connections. Look for programs supporting partnerships, workshops and conferences, journals, tools and outcomes to be launched over the next 2 years.

But SSHRC take note to maintain the foundation as you remodel the house

Not every NSERC Discovery Grant should result in a patent. Not every research grant under the insight umbrella should be mobilized or connected. When MRC became CIHR in 2000 and assumed a mandate for knowledge translation, new funds were given to the CIHR Operating Grant competition. Sure, new funds were provided for strategic competitions as well but CIHR not only protected but grew their support for fundamental research.

Not all will welcome this new program architecture but as KMb practitioners we are pleased to see SSHRC champion a connections agenda. We are also pleased to see funding maintained for research grants and priority funds as directed by federal budget priorities set by the Federal Government. As far as the limited allocations in Federal Budgets allow please continue to invest in the foundation of social sciences and humanities research. KMb is great but is must be built on a sound base of fundamental scholarship.

And federal government, listen up

The vast majority of public servants has degrees in the social sciences and humanities and were taught by professors, many of whom were supported by SSHRC. If you want informed policy makers you need a strong social science and humanities community. If you want a strong social sciences and humanities community you need a strong SSHRC. SSHRC receives 13.5% of the total federal investments in the three granting councils but supports over 50% of Canada’s academic researchers and graduate students. You do the math.

Thank you for the $3M increase to SSHRC’s budget in Budget 2010 but SSHRC needs more, much more, in 2011 if you expect informed debate and responsive public policies in security, finance, immigration, homelessness, mental health, education, aboriginal affairs, globalization, climate change, racism, multiculturalism, urban planning, rural economies, northern Canada, politics, heritage, literacy, employment, peace keeping, sport, volunteerism, federation, government reform, bilingualism, equity, infrastructure, economic renewal, sustainability, the arts, accessibility, digital literacy, transportation, poverty…

♫Let it Grow, Let it Grow, Let it Grow♫

ResearchImpact announces growth in research summaries, community access, outreach and new web tools.

Three recent stories speak to the continued development of KM services at York:

Research Summaries and Community Collaboration Stations

As reported in YFile on December 4, 2009, York announced the release of 40 additional ResearchSnapshot research summaries. This effectively doubles the number of research summaries available to inform decisions by York’s current and prospective research collaborators. See www.researchimpact.ca/researchsearch for a searchable database of ResearchSnapshots. YFile also reported on the opening of 2 Community Collaboration Stations. The KM Unit on the 2nd floor of the York Research Tower opened 2 work stations including York computers linked into the York Libraries. These two work stations will allow York research collaborators access to York research infrastructure. To reserve time on one of York’s Community Collaboration Station, please email kmunit@yorku.ca .

Social Media tools for Knowledge Mobilization

ResearchImpact previously wrote about its involvement in the launch of ORION’s social media platform, O3. On December 1, 2009 ORION’s newsletter featured an interview with ResearchImpact’s David Phipps discussing the role social media can play to enhance KM services.

New Web Stories: KM in Action

We have also made some changes to the ResearchImpact web site. New content has been added throughout the site but we have launched a new section called KM in Action. This sections features stories of successful KM outcomes or research and research use that was enabled by KM services at ResearchImpact institutions including stories on KM interns (Free the Children, Toronto Wildlife Centre), York’s KM Expo and UVic’s CUExpo in 2008 plus others. Stay tuned for more videos and stories of KM in Action to come.

KM at Queen’s University

The Queen’s University Office of Research Services hosted David Phipps to speak about the road to an institutional KM Unit. David was joined by Yolande Chan, Monieson Centre, Queen’s School of Business, who is a holder of a Knowledge Impact and Society grant and has established a KM capacity focused on economic development in Eastern Ontario. David and Yolande jointly presented on their respective KM activities and began the start of a conversation to explore inter-institutional KM collaboration. Look for Yolande and her team on twitter @RuralKnowledge.

ResearchSnapshots, Community Collaboration Stations, increased utilization of social media, KM outreach and stories of KM in Action are testament to our commitment to excellence in knowledge mobilization by our faculty, graduate students and their research collaborators.

♫Watch us grow, Watch us grow, Watch us grow♫

Public Policy Forum on Social Innovation, November 10

On November 10, I had the pleasure of attending a one-day conference hosted by the Public Policy Forum on Social Innovation. MaRS, Social Innovation Generation, Imagine Canada and HRSDC also provided support to the conference. With 100 attendees representing policy, public service, research and the private sectors and with representation from across Canada (I had the pleasure of sitting with Eastern Canadians).

The event provided a forum for open dialogue, and with 100 people present, that was an impressive feat. The Public Policy Forum encouraged participants to share information throughout the day, and I was one of many who were ‘tweeting’ interesting nuggets on good practices on social innovation.

In addition to panels of practitioners who shared their experiences and examples of social innovation, highlighted speakers were Janice Charette, HRSDC Deputy Minster and SSHRC President Dr. Chad Gaffield. Dr. Gaffield shared the leadership role that SSHRC has played in supporting research to enable social innovation. He gave a shout out to ResearchImapct, led by York University, as an example of Canadian university leadership in enabling social innovation. Dr. Gaffield stated a new integrated model of collaboration calls on university researchers to play a part. ResearchImpact is honoured to be playing a role to facilitate this new model of collaboration.

There is strong leadership in Canada to move forward with an agenda of social innovation. Entrepreneurs, researchers, educators, policy makers, youth and even knowledge brokers have a place to help shape a social innovation agenda for the betterment of Canadians. Most important for me was the opportunity to witness that Social Innovation, like Knowledge Mobilization, is easiest understood from a practical place. I was honoured to be with so many leaders who make a positive contribution to Canadian society through their work.

For more information on the Public Policy Forum, click here.