Volume 4, Issue 2, 1999
Table of Contents

Room to Move - Humanities and Social Sciences Research

By Roger Elmes
Dean, Kwantlen University College

The topic of research by college faculty has appealed to me for at least two decades. As the director of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) Canadian Studies Bureau from 1979-1983, I had the opportunity to begin lobbying the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to open their doors more fully to research grant applications from community college faculty. The outcome of those efforts took the form of a grant from SSHRC to undertake a survey of community college and institute-based research in the social sciences and humanities. It came as no surprise to us that 24 percent of respondent faculty were engaged in research and 39 percent were interested in conducting research, if sufficient funds and release time were provided. My own observations suggest that if we conducted the survey today we would get roughly the same results. About 40 percent of college faculty would still feel blocked by a lack of time and funding, while 25 percent would still be grinding away with none or little of either of these scarce resources.

The most notable changes to this resource scenario were the recent calls by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for research infrastructure proposals from colleges and institutes. In British Columbia and other jurisdictions, provincial governments have established programs which "marry" CFI and other federal grants to provincial research support. The national profile provided by ACCC in terms of lobbying for research support for its member institutions, hosting sessions at the annual conference and maintaining a network are also welcome initiatives.

However, our total gains in social sciences and humanities research have been, if not minimal, then at least very small. There is a tremendous but wasted capacity for research in our colleges and institutes. This applies to all departments, programs and disciplines from automotive repair to sociology. To illustrate, let’s turn to Kwantlen University College in Greater Vancouver. Created in 1983 as an offshoot of Douglas College, Kwantlen is British Columbia’s largest college and became the province’s fifth university-college in 1995. With a focus on "applied" degrees, Kwantlen is seeking to maintain its ties to the community, business and industry. Unless they can be linked directly to one of these areas, traditional degrees in arts and sciences have not been supported.

Given this background, it is interesting to note that Kwantlen, as an institution in transition, does not have a faculty workload differentiated between degree and non-degree programs as do the other four university-colleges. Thus, any release time or other support for research comes from external funding. Nonetheless, 25 percent of the faculty undertake a considerable amount of sustained research in the social sciences, business and, to a lesser extent, health sciences. The bulk of the research is usually short-term, contractual, negotiated by faculty and valued at less than $50,000. Topics have ranged from the fisheries and forestry to land use disputes, driver attention while operating a vehicle and cross-cultural issues in Indo-Canadian women’s health in the perinatal period. Some of these projects have been conducted in conjunction with universities, others have remained college-based but all have dealt with substantive issues, typically within a sound theoretical framework.

As an institution in transition, Kwantlen is responding to the capacity of its faculty for sustained research by creating an institutional infrastructure to facilitate and support research grant applications, research contract negotiations and the administration of contracts and grants. We know, as does every college, of the tremendous needs of our local communities, businesses and industries for competent research in support of their legitimate objectives. We also know that we can do a better job of tracking calls for proposals by many federal and provincial government departments and agencies. While SSHRC, NSERC and the National Institute of Health are important, they are only one group of players. Our communities are also players. Colleges and university-colleges have the tremendous advantage of facing daily reality checks within their operating environments. Less insulated and isolated than universities from their communities, industry and business, these institutions are much better placed to respond to research needs identified, implemented and driven by these constituents. Universities are playing catch-up in terms of these liaisons while colleges are scrambling to create the infrastructure and support mechanisms necessary to facilitate research. It is difficult to ascertain whether the universities will be able to adapt before the research capacity of the colleges begins to catch up. But without one or both scenarios coming to fruition, our constituents will continue to be short-changed.

A good illustration of this process is SSHRC’s current competition for 24 Community University Research Alliances; each valued at $200,000 per year and running for three years. As a finalist in the competition, Kwantlen is stressing its strong, long-term links to community organizations and the proven track record of its faculty for sustained community-based and community-driven research. We view the grant not as a sum to be spent solely on research, but as a sum to be levered towards creating substantially more research funding, in partnership with our communities, by drawing on the funding sources of those government departments and agencies that regularly contract for research.

What other options do we have? Are provincial governments likely to alter our funding formulae to support research by our faculty? Perhaps they will in 20 years when we have used our existing capacity to establish our reputation. What do we do in the meantime? We could complain. We could conduct more studies. Or we could just do it.

Kwantlen’s objective is to establish a self-funding research arm and we are well on our way to achieving that objective. Some colleges are even further along the road. The key is simply to start. Start by making research a part of your college or institute’s mandate.