Partner & Challenge-Driven Research: The College Model

Jeff Taylor 0:01
We can’t just have a university research program or an applied research program at colleges. We really need both. So, you can imagine a nice, beautiful ecosystem with universities doing fundamental research that’s so important, colleges doing that applied research that really helps bridge the gap to industry or community. And if we can do that properly, Canada will be awesome, even more awesome.

Pari Johnston 0:27
The fact that more and more of our colleges have really cutting-edge facilities, specialized equipment, etcetera, that are open for use from partners is really key as well. The fact is the model of problem-focused research is valued within the college system. The rewards and incentives for research in a university-based system are quite different.

Stephanie Reid 0:58
Welcome to Beyond Research. I’m your host Stephanie Reid. On the Beyond Research Podcast, we speak with researchers who are working to help solve society’s biggest challenges. Recently, we’ve been exploring various models for research projects and the pathway to societal impact. In this episode, Stefan Leslie, CEO of Research Nova Scotia, sits down with our guests to discuss a successful but often overlooked model for research: The College Model. Listen as we discuss the types of research projects colleges undertake and how it differs from traditional university-based research. We also explore student involvement in workforce preparation, the principles of partner- and challenge-driven research, serving the problem solving needs of communities, as well as the stereotypes and barriers facing college research.

Jeff Taylor 1:55
So I’m Jeff Taylor. I’m the AVP research, innovation, international strategic initiatives, entrepreneurship, contract, trade, all the fun stuff at the Nova Scotia Community College.

Stephanie Reid 2:09
Dr. Jeff Taylor is the Associate Vice President of Applied Research and Innovation at Nova Scotia Community College, also known as NSCC. Prior to this, he worked in various research related roles, including Managing Director at Aspen Global Change Institute and Affiliate Faculty with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Pari Johnston 2:34
Hi, I’m Pari Johnston, the President and Chief Executive Officer at Colleges and Institute’s Canada, the national voice and association of Canada’s 138 colleges, CEGEPs, polytechnics and institutes.

Stephanie Reid 2:48
Pari Johnston is the President and CEO of Colleges and Institute’s Canada, CICan for short. Formerly, she has been the Vice President of Policy and Public Affairs at Genome Canada and the Vice President of Policy and Public Affairs at Universities Canada.

Stefan Leslie 3:10
All right, Jeff, let’s start with you. We’ve heard from the introduction that you actually spent most of your career in the university side. So, what brought you here from the glamour of the United States?

Jeff Taylor 3:22
Yeah, it was 2016, and I was living in the U.S. and had been there for many years and was kind of missing family and was finding myself in 2016, looking for an opportunity to come home. You know, my parents were aging, my brother had a young family, I never got to see them and was just kind of looking around at job postings, and I saw this opportunity at NSCC. It’s only about 27 years old. So, when I was a kid growing up, it really didn’t exist, it was sort of just coming into formation. So, I had no idea what NSCC was, I didn’t know about college applied research. But I had done a lot of research. And I’ve done a lot of research administration, a lot of research infrastructure development, I thought, how hard can it be I should apply for this. I could move home, could be great. And here we are eight years later.

Stefan Leslie 4:17
Great. And Pari, thank you for joining us as well. And your background also has a fair bit of university context as well. So can you tell us a little bit about how you came to your job, freshly, reasonably freshly there, but talk a little bit about why you chose to go there.

Pari Johnston 4:33
I started in December, and it was frankly a no brainer when the opportunity came up to be part of CICan’s future because I’ve spent 25 years in the higher education space here in Canada. So, prior to becoming the new CEO at CICan, I had spent the last four years really delving into the transformative science of genomics. I was the Head of Public Policy and Public Affairs at Genome Canada really was tasked with talking about why genomics mattered to Canadians to parliamentarians, and decision makers. Prior to that I had lived and worked and breathed at Universities Canada, for over 20 years. I started working in the international relations area and over time, took on new roles, leaving as the Vice President of Policy and Public Affairs. So, I had a lot of opportunity to work with the university sector, advancing the cause of research and innovation and learning.

Stefan Leslie 5:36
You both come from an interesting background closely tied to the university community. So, can you tell me why or what the differences are in a college approach, or a community college or polytechnic approach to research, not as necessarily criticism to the way universities operate, but just how they differ and what different things they may offer to both the researchers but also the communities they serve?

Pari Johnston 6:03
What I have really come to understand deeply is the very unique value proposition of college-led applied research and innovation, which is based on the demand of our partners, industry partners, community partners, other kinds of partners who are in our local and regional communities, who are really wanting to solve a particular problem. And who want to come to an institution like Jeff’s and say, look, can you help? Can you open up your facilities? Can you bring some of your students? Can you bring some of your, you know, faculty together around this particular problem? And we respond very, very well in those kinds of circumstances. So, first of all, it’s demand driven. And I think that’s key. The second thing is it’s very much focused on the needs of small and medium sized enterprises and community partners. And this is very important, given the kind of economy that Canada has. And we also really focus, I like to use the term we work in terms of our applied research at the speed of business. So, 80% of our projects are completed within a year. And so you can really see why this is an important value add within our broader research ecosystem, because it can lead into downstream impact quite quickly. The other unique piece is that 98% of our partners are Canadian, so we really are focused on Canadian-driven research and innovation, and they keep their intellectual property. So that’s a big difference relative to the kinds of approaches within the university research ecosystem. And like you said, it’s different. It’s a unique value add, that’s part of what we need to think about in terms of the overall impact of federal research investment. I like to think of both-and. We need, we have to have a role for curiosity-driven foundational research to generate new discoveries and knowledge, but we also really and equally need the role of our institutions to translate, to work to adapt and adopt new technologies to respond to the immediate demands of partners to get those ideas and knowledge into application. And that’s where I think the college applied research, play, if you will, is so important for Canada’s overall research investments.

Stefan Leslie 8:28
Jeff, does that sound? Does it sort of reflect to the development of NSCC? You mentioned 23 years relatively fast evolution to quite a substantial organization today. So, a lot of the things that Pari just mentioned, you know, demand side responsive, just community relatively fast turnover. Is that how the college operates?

Jeff Taylor 8:47
Yeah. Pari had a lot of really good points there. And I’d add just a couple of nuances. Maybe in the context of our college, the first one that she mentioned, which is really important is the partnership angle. So, no one does any research without a partner. An industry partner, community partner, a municipality sometimes. But the point there is that in the university context, usually you do research, you conduct an experiment, you gather data, you analyze it, you get some results, and then you move into this knowledge translation phase where you’re trying to disseminate your results. In this college partnered model, there’s a constant dialogue back and forth with the partner at all times. So, knowledge dissemination, knowledge transfer is a very different thing at the college. We want of course, to be very applied and hands on and so by doing it in this kind of back and forth conversation way, we’re always sort of continuously imparting what we learn. Pari noted how fast some of the projects get done. So, there isn’t this kind of drawn-out model that the universities tend to embrace more. So, you can imagine a nice, beautiful ecosystem with universities doing fundamental research that’s so important. College’s doing that applied research that really helps bridge the gap to industry or community. And then our final producers in industry or community bringing that to life at the far end of the spectrum. And if we can do that properly, Canada will be awesome. Even more awesome.

Stefan Leslie 10:17
So, it’s not as if it’s as clean a system or as discrete a system where you’ve got universities doing fundamental discovery, curiosity, although lots of that happens there. And then that’s kind of passed on or maybe taken up by the college or a college level system, which does application along with a partner. So, what is it in the structure of those organizations do you see as being leading the college system more towards applied? And what is it about that organizational structure that provides that as a system that simplifies it, perhaps on the, from the partners perspective? Pari, I’ll start with you.

Pari Johnston 10:59
First and foremost, of course, again, is the fact that our sector is absolutely, and Jeff spoke to this, tied to the problem-solving needs of our communities. So we have industry advisory committees, we have program advisory committees made up of those from industry, who are advising on the creation of our particular programs and curricula. We have, you know, offices set up through Deans of Research or in Jeff’s role, you know, that are very much open door to the needs of communities, and they’re very, you know, their job is to connect with the community partners. That’s our mandate, essentially, is to really focus on regional and economic development and workforce development. These are, you know, it is fundamentally in the DNA of colleges to be looking outward to partner. I would say as well too that the, you know, the fact that more and more of our colleges have really cutting-edge facilities, specialized equipment, etcetera, that are open for use from partners is really key as well. I think as well, the fact is, you know, the model of problem-focused research is valued within the college system, the rewards and incentives for research in a university-based system are quite different.

Jeff Taylor 12:28
Yeah, when I think of the employee profile of someone that works at the college, they tend to be very passionate subject matter experts in their field, whether it’s about certain form of technology, or a kind of music, or helping seniors or whatever it is that there’s a lot of untapped knowledge there and tremendous passion. So, if you can tap into that, and we say, listen, we know you guys are some of the best LIDAR operators in the country and you fly this very expensive equipment on airplanes, you can make wonderful maps of terrain. How can we bring that to bear for Nova Scotia, what’s a solution that we can provide to the province or the people, the community, and they come up with a million things, you know, the Isthmus of Chignecto, for listeners who are unfamiliar, that’s the little bit of land that’s slowly eroding away that connects Nova Scotia to New Brunswick, and there’s a highway in a railway line through there. And mapping that all out in great detail and analyzing coastal flooding risk and risk with our changing climate, really valuable information for everyone in Nova Scotia, if you think about the supply chain. And the team is so happy to do that, so you can really tap into that wanting to showcase their expertise and skills and kind of provide a solution that’s a value. There’s a bit of a maybe a deficit in Canada when it comes to business-led R&D. In Canada 39% of all R&D is done at the university or college. That’s about 40% of the world’s, of the country’s research. And this is really different than other countries. So, Germany, it’s only about 18%, the UK, it’s 23%, the OECD average is only 16% in higher education. So, we tend to do a lot more R&D than other countries. And the reason for that, I don’t know if reasons the right way to put it, but the facts are that the business expenses in R&D are quite low in Canada. So, if there’s a way that colleges are able to partner with industry and have them leverage some investment into R&D, I think that’s very powerful from a nationwide economic perspective. So yes, college x, here’s $100,000 to try and address this question and industry partner, you need to kick in to $30,000, something like that, to try to get the tip of the wedge to encourage more business investment in R&D. And hopefully, that’ll make us a much more innovative country at the end of the day.

Stefan Leslie 15:08
So, you see this as a mechanism that given the high percentage of academic performers of R&D as a bit, given that tie to community industry, that end user that that’s a way to mobilize or to ensure that that work is being done in service of their needs.

Jeff Taylor 15:27
Yeah, 100%. I think, I remember working at many universities, and people just have their head down or in their lab, or they’re doing their own thing, and they love it, they’re very curious about it, and the end result might be a publication. And that’s of great value, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to the poor Isthmus of Chignecto problem and trying to understand what sort of land management practices need to change to be more resilient for climate in the future.

Stefan Leslie 15:54
So maybe perhaps a way to think of it is that organizations, it’s easy to oversimplify organizations, let alone whole categories of organizations, because there’s certainly parts of universities that are highly applied, certainly many of the faculty who see themselves working on issues, maybe the Chignecto Isthmus or not, but perhaps it’s a matter of the predominance and the structural elements of the college system ensures that that’s universally the case, whereas in the university, there’s perhaps less direction on how that happens. So maybe it’s more up to the individual lab or the individual faculty member to sort of see how their role might be shaped? Would that be a fair assumption? And if it is fair, does that sort of hold true across the country?

Pari Johnston 16:42
Well, I think it goes back to what are some of the structural issues with respect to rewards and incentives, when you think about the tenure system in the context of universities where, you know, the need to be able to publish in top peer reviewed journals is absolutely critical to you know, advancement. The way many of our granting programs are shaped within the federal granting system also, you know, tilt towards rewarding that kind of research output. And so, you know, the incentives and the rewards and the focus are very different in a college context, where, you know, as Jeff noted, you have passionate instructors and experts in their particular field or technology, and they’re there primarily to teach. And so then, you know, the opportunity to partner in a research project will require certain incentives and structures, which are not always, you know, maybe I’ll just pivot to this for a sec, rewarded within the bulk of our research granting programs right now. We have a wonderful program through NSERC our community college program, but many of the granting council programs do not provide an opportunity for what we call teach and release. If somebody is brought in to do a research project from the college space, and they’re primarily teaching, the granting councils programs do not provide any faculty release support. Whereas that’s different within university programs for faculty, you know, are expected to do research. Many of our colleges are not eligible to be lead partners in a lot of the granting council programs. They can be junior partners, but they have to be brought in by a university as opposed to being centered as a lead partner. And then if you look at merit review, often you have processes, you know, that are not understood by those doing the reviews, they haven’t maybe experienced college applied research deeply, they haven’t spent time in a college. So we find some of the challenges with respect to merit review as well. So, I would say, so some of these some of these particular issues where we’re maybe under leveraging right now, I would argue the potential impact of college applied research and innovation is because some of our funding and incentive structures are not set up to really fully take advantage of what the colleges can bring to the table around research in this country. And this is something we’re certainly talking a lot about at CICan. I was recently in front of the House of Commons Parliamentary Committee on Science and Research and they were looking at, you know, some of the challenges and opportunities related to the federal distribution of research in this country. And just to give you sort of an example, you know, if you look at the overall investment in college applied research through the granting agencies, it’s 3%. It’s 3%, versus you know, 97% going to the university system. And I would argue it’s time to maybe reimagine how we, and reinvest in an approach that that centers the college value-add a lot more. And that’s going to need to take a look at some of the existing barriers within those programs that disallow or don’t make eligible some of the college realities.

Stefan Leslie 20:10
So, I watched some of your testimony in front of the standing committee of the House of Commons several weeks ago, maybe it was a couple of months ago. So how has the response been to that point? Because you made those, some of those same points very powerfully to that committee. How have they responded?

Pari Johnston 20:28
Well, we’re still, there’s, the committee’s we haven’t seen their final report yet. But certainly, I think that there was a lot of, there’s a lot of interest, because you know, this is the thing. Parliamentarians represent their ridings. They’re fully embedded in the interests of their local constituents and ridings. So they see the needs of their communities, as Jeff pointed out, for very practical solutions to some of the, you know, issues that their communities are facing, whether it’s, you know, impacts of climate change, impacts of homelessness, and they want to see that their publicly-funded, post-secondary institutions supported in a way that they can respond to those challenges. So, there was certainly a lot of interest. I think we’re in, we’re at a place now where there’s an important recognition and reckoning around how we think about research impact in this country, and how we then look to support it. The other thing I’m quite interested in, is the opportunity that is coming out of the last budget where there was a recognition of the need to modernize and reorient the way we fund research in this country. There’s announcement of a new capstone research organization yet to be defined, and that will be something we’re going to be very involved in, as well as other stakeholders, but its focus is really to address some of the gaps we currently have in our research ecosystem around interdisciplinarity, around International, but also most importantly, mission-driven research. So, you know, and this is right in colleges wheelhouse, the opportunity to define a challenge a public policy challenge, where you are then going to invest research dollars to drive solutions to work, but we must be part of those, that kind of mission-driven research orientation. So, I’m quite hopeful, actually, I think that our college system has matured over the last 20 years in terms of its research intensity, breadth and relevance. And, you know, our job and folks like Jeff were, who really are at the leading edge of all this work is to just keep telling the story and keep providing the evidence of impact. And to demonstrate that we need to be very equal and centered partners at the table.

Stefan Leslie 22:43
So, Jeff, Pari just talked a lot about the perhaps some of the future of what research will look like, the kind of definition of impact, challenge-based research and so on. Is the college ready for that? Does it have the capacity to take that on?

Jeff Taylor 22:57
Yeah, we can’t wait. The goal is to have activity going everywhere. I don’t know if we can get every single student, you know, over 10,000 students is maybe impossible. But more and more and more we want to grow to that. The communities are keen, the leadership at campuses are keen, there’s no shortage of kind of the demand, that demand-driven aspect that Pari alluded to earlier. Funding is probably one of our biggest bottlenecks. And Pari already mentioned some of the challenges. And I’m hopeful that this continued great advocacy that Pari and CICan have been doing well will actually pay off for us down the road. But if we can have that scorecard thriving, where every single campus, every school has lots of applied research activity, I think Nova Scotia will be better off.

Stefan Leslie 23:43
So, maybe this is a simplification, but I suspect there’s been an evolution of the student body at the college, whereas probably before, and maybe this is a stereotype, there were those who were not interested in a university route, but needed it for workforce development. And that over time, there’s been a bit of a blurring between who’s interested and who ought to be in both the university and the college system. And so you have those who start in the college and moved to university, but also the other way round. So, are we seeing kind of a bit of a movement of what colleges are interested and capable of delivering based not just on the structure, but also an evolution of the student body and what they’re interested in capable in as well?

Jeff Taylor 24:30
Yeah, I mean, I’m smiling. When we went to school, there was no option for us, we were going to university was sort of what my parents expected, probably what our teachers told us what our classmates were doing. And so, I think if you’re a student in 2024, if you’re a 20-year-old, you’re looking at these options and you kind of weigh the return on investments and what’s going to get you to a better place and colleges really have a value proposition that’s very attractive. So, I’d say the students have really shifted over the years. Again, I don’t want to be negative about the importance of universities at all. I think partnered approaches, articulation agreements, abilities for students to transfer from a college to university and back again is so important for like the labor market needs of 2024. And it’s probably incumbent on all of us to get better at that. From the research context, there are definitely policy challenges for colleges and universities to be able to collaborate. And it’s a little bit infuriating because there’s, there’s wonderful, you know, as you know, Stefan in Nova Scotia, there’s 10 universities, one college, there’s wonderful opportunities for us to collaborate. And the boots on the ground, frontline researchers find those opportunities and do great work. Fun example, I’d like to bring up Dalhousie University in Halifax here has a Canada Research Chair in data analytics. And they offer a master’s program there in this in this field, many of his students would be enrolled in this, and they have a co-op term. A lot of them come over to our NSCC campus to complete their co-op term and work in our lab and get real hands on experience with real life data, and then go back and finish their masters at Dalhousie. So, a really neat synergy that’s occurred, there’s no agreement, nothing’s really written down about that, it just sort of happened over time. And I don’t want to disrupt that wonderful kind of ecosystem development. But if you want to get into having a formal agreement on a research project, colleges aren’t allowed to receive research support funding, we can’t charge indirect costs, we have all these constraints that universities don’t have.

Stefan Leslie 26:33
So, Pari, do you find that the relationship with universities is generally good, and I mean that both at the representative level, so as an organization, you used to work for Universities Canada, and now you’re at Colleges and Institutes Canada, so both at the kind of representative level, but also, as just Jeff has just described, at the kind of individual university or even faculty or department level with colleges, and I’m really speaking across the country. I’m just interested in what kind of models are out there.

Pari Johnston 27:06
I do think things certainly, from the vantage point that I’ve had over the last many years, things have changed a lot. There’s been a lot of evolution with respect to the on the ground, intentionality and appetite across universities and colleges to partner in more profound and robust ways. One of the examples I really like to showcase is the Southern Ontario Network for Applied Manufacturing, SONAMI. And it’s led out of Niagara College and SONAMI is an example of that kind of coalition of post-secondary institutions. It’s college-led originally, but now two universities have joined, and so there’s nine institutions in total, really focused on being a one stop shop platform for industry partners around advanced manufacturing, problem-solving. They’re really interested in taking that to scale and looking at a national way. I mean, this is what we need more of is more examples like that. I’m seeing more and more interest and a really great new example that’s been announced recently, and colocation. If you think Sas Polytechnic and the University of Saskatchewan and their new innovation park lab, where they’re going to be the new campus for Sas Poly in Saskatoon, you know, they’re really looking at this as a complete sort of continuum of eco innovation to respond to the provincial needs in Saskatchewan. So, I’m hopeful I think that it does start, as Jeff’s pointed out, with faculty and partners, and in on the ground seeing the opportunity. I think we have worked to do with, you know, with those that are the funders and the policymakers to incentivize that kind of approach. And I’m really excited about that opportunity to create a bit of a shared purpose and narrative around research impact in this country, and how we can find areas to partner for ultimately, what is the big challenges facing Canada? And how can we leverage the full capacity of our system to respond to those challenges? I think in a context of scarcity, you can see the competition emerge often. And I’m really interested in trying to advance the opportunity for talking in terms of how do we work together to meet Canada’s biggest challenges. We have a lot to offer. And I’m hopeful that we can kind of have those kinds of conversations across the national associations as well.

Jeff Taylor 29:37
We’re kind of held back. We need a transformative change in just the way that we’re funded and the way that we do work. And Pari brought up a great example earlier with SONAMI that Southern Ontario manufacturing initiative that’s entirely funded by FedDev by the Regional Development Agency in Southern Ontario. So, it’s not a tri-Council program. It’s not a federal granting program at all. It’s done through another funding mechanism, I think they have $10 million. Like they’re doing great work. It’s really exciting. And that happened because of out of the box thinking and finding another way to fund it. And I think we need more and more of that. The notion of networked or partnered solutions is one that colleges are very keen to get in on, it’s a very collaborative space, one of the kind of social nuances I would suggest between difference between universities and colleges is, colleges are so happy to work together and share and collaborate in a way that I never saw at universities. I think, if we had more opportunities for partnered, networked calls, colleges would be all over that and would really be exciting. The grand challenge area, that was very popular when I was in the States, you know, it was nothing for the National Science Foundation to get a whole bunch of people together at a conference and identify, you know, eight, nine, 10 grand challenge areas, and then the next year have a funding call for people to try to propose programs and solutions to these grand challenges. And it’s very, sounds very simple the way I just described it, but it can really allow for some focus results that I think would better Canada and the economy and the community. So, I think colleges are poised for all of that. But as long as we’re stuck in our current structure, I don’t know if there’s a lot more we can do.

Stefan Leslie 31:23
No one will ever admit to be a pessimist, but on the say the next five to 10 years of the research future of colleges, institutes, polytechnics, are you an optimist? Or maybe would you call yourself a realist?

Pari Johnston 31:34
I have always been an optimist. I’m a pragmatist, but at the end of the day, we always have to try to be bold in our thinking and big in our efforts. And so, I am actually exceptionally optimistic. I gave a talk at our national symposium last week in Calgary and I talked about the time for colleges is now and I fundamentally believe that. So I’m gonna go with optimist all the way.
Stefan Leslie 31:59
Very good. Jeff?

Jeff Taylor 32:00
That’s the reason I work here. You know, I worked at universities for a long time, and I’m so bullish on the future of higher education at colleges. The university model has many great strengths and a long history, but the future is really based at colleges. I’m 100% on board Pari, and the more that we can embrace that college applied research agenda and enable it to be more successful, I think, the better Nova Scotia and Canada is going to be.

Stephan Leslie 32:27
Great. Thank you so much to you both. And we’ll end it there. Thank you, Jeff, and thank you Pari. It was a great conversation.

Jeff Taylor 32:34
Thank you.

Pari Johnston 32:35
Thank you so much, I really enjoyed it.

Stephanie Reid 32:38
Although currently a small portion of total research activity, the college model could be an important complement to the current research system. By adhering to the principles of problem-focused or challenge-driven research, and by including partners from the beginning of a project, our guests are optimistic about the ability of college research to help solve some of our biggest challenges today and well into the future.

We hope you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave us five stars. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time.