Forging New Partnerships and Expanding Funding Opportunities

The objectives and actions for this priority draw on insights from past activities and initiatives including current Research Hub support of funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Vancouver Foundation along with the current grant-writing workshops.

2020-2021 Activities

  1. Inventorying and categorizing current FoE partnerships
  2. Identifying provincial and federal funding opportunities beyond Tri- Council ones
  3. Identifying international grant opportunities
  4. Identifying grant and contract opportunities from Foundations and organizations, including Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, and Spencer Foundation

Objectives

  1. Foster international research collaborations and partnerships
  2. Develop research collaborations and partnerships with other SFU faculties
  3. Increase visibility of our collective (faculty and student) expertise in educational research
  4. Leverage SFU institutional research support from the VPR Office, Institutional Strategic Awards (ISA), Office of Research Services (ORE), Office of Research Ethics (ORE), Knowledge Mobilisation Hub, CERi; and external support, such as that from SSHRC, MITACS.
  5. Develop capacity within the Faculty on how to find, manage, work with and report on working with external organizations.
  6. Develop systems and processes to support the pursuit of additional funders, partnerships and donors

Actions

  1. Develop database-driven visualization tools that allow for searching and filtering meta-level information on research projects and theses (e.g., year, area, abstract, etc.)
  2. Strengthen collaboration with the SFU Communications office to promote FoE research and researchers
  3. Developing Knowledge Mobilisation expertise within the FoE for faculty and students by leveraging support and resources from the SFU Knowledge Mobilisation Hub
  4. Conduct one-on-one short interviews of our faculty members to document their partnerships
  5. Offer workshops on applying for Foundation funding
  6. Devise new forms of support for partnership development (consider working with CERi, hiring RAs, and working with teaching faculty)
  7. Conducts annual reviews of all theses produced within the past 12 months (e.g., reading abstracts), identify external organizations partnered in the thesis work, and provide suggestions and recommendations to the FoE on further research partnership development
  8. Develop reciprocal partnerships with Indigenous organizations active in the territories and communities where we work and in the field of education
  9. Identify areas of research that could potentially attract donors (e.g., ecological education, imaginative education, and arts educationix

ix This might be done in connection with the proposal of research challenge areas in Priority 1.