Faculty at Conestoga College learned recently about research funding programs available to them through Canada 's largest academic research funding body, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
"We like to say we support people, discovery and innovation,” said Anne Alper, manager of the research partnership planning program at NSERC. "That's where the colleges would fit, because NSERC is beginning to recognize that the colleges are playing an increasing role in innovation.”
NSERC, which has an annual budget of $700-million, supports over 17,000 science and engineering students pursuing their master's degrees and PhD's, as well as over 10,000 university and college professors.
Of that budget, less than a quarter is devoted to innovation. This translates into less than one per cent of the overall budget going to fund research at colleges.
According to Alper, NSERC is very interested in supporting applied research projects at the college level and has set up some specific grant programs to help enable college faculty receive funding.
"The Idea to Innovation Program's objective is to support the development of technologies that have identifiable market potential, and then transfer them quickly to Canadian companies,” said Alper.
She went on to say because the research done at colleges is so applied and in direct response to industry needs, this program is a good fit for them.
Another program Alper mentioned is the College and Community Innovation Pilot. This was developed specifically to give funding to colleges, and NSERC will be using information gathered from the program over the last two years to develop case studies.
"We want to see if the money given through this program helped the colleges,” said Alper. "We also want to look at the different schools and investigate what made them successful, or what kept them from being successful.”
In a recent interview, Angela Vuk, director of applied research at Conestoga College , said she thinks the programs offered though NSERC will be a good way for faculty here to get funds.
"From the college's perspective, it's a great opportunity for our faculty to keep them current and engaged with industry in terms of what's out there and current with research,” she said. "But also for the students, it gives them a really good opportunity to get hands-on experience and get them excited about research, and maybe that's a career path that they decide they want to take.”
Because the applied research office is only a couple of years old, Vuk said right now they're working on all of the policies and procedures needed to make the program work, as well as raising awareness of the program.
"My job is to help increase the profile of the college, to market the capabilities of Conestoga to the community and the region,” she said.
Vuk went on to say that developing the applied research program is a long-term proposition.
"It's going to be 5-10 years I think before we maximize our applied research function, in the sense that we have the most faculty that are interested in doing research doing research, all the protocols are well laid out and we have an established network of industry partners who come to us or give us word of mouth referrals so that other companies can come to us as well,” she said.
Some faculty members at Conestoga remain unconvinced about the funding being a long-term solution.
Jim Galloway, co-ordinator of the welding and robotics technology programs at the college, said most funding programs have been set up to fund research at universities, not at colleges.
"I'm a bit cynical from what I've seen historically in terms of how colleges are perceived when it comes to research,” he said. "A lot of the university researchers are so far out in the land of speculative research that when it comes to what is practical and what is innovative in terms of what industry requires, there's a big disconnect. I think that colleges and college faculty in general have a fairly good handle on what industry is doing and the problems industry is facing.”
Sources:
Anne Alper 613-996-6521, anne.alper@nserc.ca
Jim Galloway 519-748-5220, jgalloway@conestogac.on.ca
By STEPHANIE IRVINE
This story was also featured in the SPOKE.