Growing a Research Culture

Patricia Clements
Department of English
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

Thank you for inviting me to take part in this conversation. It's a special pleasure to explore tonight some issues of research culture in the humanities and social sciences at this university, where excellent work in those areas is being done, and which houses the vibrant and active Humanities Research Unit.

The title of this session — growing a research culture — must have been produced by someone alert to the suggestive efficiencies of language. In a breath, it carries us across the boundaries of the disciplines and gives us a unifying metaphor, a petri dish large enough to house us all — natural and engineering scientists, medical researchers, humanists, social scientists, fine artists. It's a metaphor on which I am happy to sail into the work of thinking about what conditions encourage growth. This oversized petri dish, growing its research culture, has something in common, in my mind, with the clamshell Raven dropped on the beach, and, like that, is full of the possible and the unpredictable.

I would like to approach this action-oriented session on the question of research culture and change from the point of view of my experience over the past decade or so as a scholar and a dean at the University of Alberta. I do not presume that our experiences or our situation will have been the same as yours, but I hope that some of the changes we have undertaken in those years may be of interest in this weekend's discussions. I want first of all to talk about what happened to us in the Faculty of Arts, or, to put it more actively, what we did and how we did it. Then I would like to address the pressing question of the future of research in the humanities and social sciences.

A decade or so ago, research was beginning to migrate from the margins to the centre of our concerns in the Faculty of Arts. The large numbers of scholars hired through the sixties were entering on the period of their best maturity. Some of these were outstanding research scholars and creative artists; many were comfortable with an idea of teaching as very much the larger part of their professional assignment.

There was no Maclean's to tell us this, but we were made very well aware, in annual stiff notes from the University's first Vice-President (Research), Gordin Kaplan, that our performance with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) was disappointing, if not dismal. Though we were proud to say that we were the third largest Faculty of Arts in Canada, every year we trailed badly in the SSHRC rankings. We were defensive about this: the true measure of research success, we said, was research outputs; grants were merely an input. In addition to that, we did not want to be told by the granting council how to conduct our research. We believed that the pattern of research in the social sciences and especially in the humanities struck a dissonant note in an environment increasingly focussed on what we called "the science model." On the whole, we worked as individual researchers, individually funded, and we explained that our needs were small. Historians, political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, scholars in literature and languages — on the whole, we said, what we needed was time. We did not need much in the line of gear; and we did not want much in the line of graduate assistance. And while all those things may have been true, the conclusion we wanted them to support, that is that our SSHRC performance did not matter, or at least that it didn't matter much, was not true.

I am surprised now to write that paragraph, because it seems to me to describe a reality now very much out of date. Of course we continue to do our work as independent scholars and thinkers, working alone in the library or in our offices, but we no longer feel so defensive about it. That kind of work is central to what we do and to the whole adventure of discovery and critical reflection as we model it to our students. Certainly I think it is the responsibility of the University to provide support for this work. In our Faculty it has produced, among many other things, Juliet and Rowland McMaster's books on the eighteenth and nineteenth century novel, John Orrell's work on the Shakespearean stage, Doug Owram's book on the baby boomers, Derek Sayer's book on Czechoslovakia, The Coasts of Bohemia (said to be the best book on the subject, even though written by an Englishman working in Alberta), Linda Fedigan's book on primates — and any number of other contributions to Canadian writing or to public policy or to social, scientific, and cultural research. This kind of work is at the intellectual heart of what we do and it is also at the heart of the larger culture we live in.

But now, a decade later, we also do research in other ways. Several new and exciting projects in the Faculty of Arts could be described as working to what we used to call the "science model". They are experimental projects, operating with a substantial budget, involving several participants, including graduate students, requiring a significant investment in equipment, and, as the Chair of my Department might say, taking up a lot of space. There are also projects operating on a new model altogether: involving a wide range of new partnerships, across departments, across faculties, across universities, and well beyond the academic world to include a wide variety of communities. These projects are evolving new practices in the education of graduate students.

"They are also projects... involving a wide range of new partnerships, across departments, across faculties, across universities, and well beyond the academic world to include a wide variety of communities."

At the end of a decade of change, our research culture in the Faculty of Arts is more open to new methodologies, and more experimental. We are more confident about our place in the world. And all of this has happened in spite of the facts that in the year of the longest knives the Alberta system took a budget cut of 21%, and in virtually every other year in the decade we took additional draining, though less dramatic cuts.

Oh, and by the way, according to our Research Grants Office, reporting in 1998, we had moved from somewhere between twelfth and sixteenth to number three in the total funding allocations from SSHRC. Just about a year ago today, Roger Smith, our Vice-President (Research) hosted a large reception in celebration of that fact.

Unimaginable! The Vice-President (Research) had a celebration for us? — Yes, and presented us with a specially designed lapel pin, too. What happened?

Of course, change is complex and its causes multiple. The University refocused on research in its new strategic plan, and it identified some targets and made some public promises about what it would achieve, but we were well on our way before that. In the Faculty of Arts, I think that probably the largest factor in helping us to see some kinds of change as an ally to our purposes was our decision to look our research culture in the eye, as you are doing, and then, intently and strategically, to look at what was happening in the world beyond us. We became keenly alert to the policies of the Research Council we had previously ignored; we kept an eye on research policy documents issuing from government sources at home and in other provinces; we tried to see where things were going. A lot of walls came down. And, most importantly, — this is always the most important thing — we hired a whole new generation of excellent research scholars. All of these new colleagues see research or creative work as central to their professional assignment in the Faculty of Arts.

In the Faculty Office, we tried to reconstruct the relationship of the Faculty to the research of faculty members. We produced a set of administrative practices to support and encourage research. It is astounding now to think that there had been no Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Arts: as though we had accepted that research belonged to Medicine and Science and Engineering, and teaching, separated from inquiry, belonged to us. It was clear that there was a major role for research support in a faculty of our size (now about 360 full time continuing academic staff). We developed a support system for our colleagues' research and began to address the SSHRC issue. We did not subscribe to the view that SSHRC grants were an infallible index of quality in research, but we were absolutely certain that our showing in the SSHRC competition was not doing us any good, either internally or externally. We launched what we called a SSHRC blitz. We talked with colleagues about why it mattered, made the information available in various ways, created a mentorship program, offered administrative and secretarial support to applicants. We targeted senior scholars and invited them to lunch to ask them to participate and to encourage their best graduate students to do so, too. We targeted new scholars and gave them reduced teaching loads in their first year or two for the purpose of developing their research programs. For the purpose of helping new colleagues to see the shape of Canadian research support, personalizing it, and creating research community, we invited the President of the Council to address the Faculty Council and to party with new colleagues (and Paule Leduc and Marc Renaud did splendid work for us in both environments). Department Chairs became flexible in the assignment of teaching, taking into account a staff member's research program. My colleagues also gradually made some changes in the behaviour of the Salaries and Promotions Committee, and as the positive benefits of decent research funding — such as the ability to fund graduate students — became more apparent, the Committee began to take this into account, in the assessment of performance.

"...there was, when we began, no Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Arts: as though we had accepted that research belonged to Medicine and Science and Engineering, and teaching belonged to us."

And, finally, we became celebratory. we recognized achievement. We had parties for and arranged publicity for colleagues who had achieved splendid things in their research. And splendid things there were: we celebrated a Molson Prize, some Orders of Canada, some Fellows of the Royal Society, four Governor-General's medals for literature, and many other achievements, awards, and prizes.

And in the meantime, in the fourth year of this work, the University appointed Martha Piper as Vice-President (Research), and it became a truth universally acknowledged that Research Makes Sense! Her work had a hugely positive impact on research at the University of Alberta, since she made it her project to take the University's research to the community, to argue its necessity, its utility, and, always unflinchingly, its value.

"[Martha Piper] made it her project to take the University's research to the community, to argue its necessity, its utility, and, always unflinchingly, its value."

I said a few moments ago that the best information I had about the needs of scholars in Arts was my experience as a scholar in Arts. I would like to tell you about an experience I had as a scholar that had great influence on me as an administrator. This story seems to me to convey important information about administration and research culture.

A few years ago, a number of colleagues and I made a proposal for a Major grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a project that was both literary history and original work in the textual applications of electronic technologies. At a scholarly meeting, I met with two people who were working on computing issues related to the markup of literary texts and who became excited about the different kind of project we were proposing to do. Both of them agreed to join the research team, and both — and this is the true measure of their excitement — agreed to come to Edmonton in January for an intensive workshop. But one of them was at Brown University, and the other was at Princeton, and I, like most researchers in our fields, was in deficient supply of money. So I called my Vice-President Research, who didn't hesitate. There would be an account for the development of this project.

• mean it when you say that research is important and be prepared to show that you mean it by assigning it a budget priority;
• know your people and trust them;
• remember that research does not come from the top down;
• be prepared to take risks.

That is a far cry from an attitude of bureaucratic control and micro-management which merely stifles good work, and which has no place in a petri dish growing the research culture. Bureaucratic control and the creative spirit of research are not easy partners.

"...the attitude of bureaucratic control and micro-management ...merely stifles good work, and has no place in a petri dish growing the research culture."

That freely-given research development account was at the core of one of the most successful research initiatives in the Faculty of Arts. We realized that we had a great deal to gain from participation in the large, collaborative projects to which the Council was opening doors. These offered a different kind of support, enough to fund big, risk-taking projects in the humanities and social sciences, enough therefore to give us some experience in collaborative research methodologies which were still largely new for us, enough to help us to reach out and to form research partnerships with excellent scholars outside of our own community; and enough to provide very substantial support to graduate programs.

To assist in the development of collaborative work, we initiated an Incubator Project. This provided three years of modest but real support to colleagues wishing to put together a research team to conduct investigations on the large scale. The central understanding was this: that the funding would last for three years with no extension, whatever the outcome of the research, and that its purpose was to enable scholars to form strong interdisciplinary teams, to formulate a research program, and to obtain outside funding. That incubator funding has, so far, produced The Institute for Public Economics, the Medieval and Early Modern Institute, the Parkland Institute (a public policy think-tank), and the Centre for the Study of Popular Music. The work of these institutes and centres is having positive impact. They have raised the profile, both internally and externally, of work across the spectrum of the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts, and they have created a new sense that the organization is capable of flexible response to changing research needs. Their work is of high quality: one of them, the Parkland Institute, has been awarded a grant in the recent Major Collaborative Research Initiatives competition.

"...its purpose was to enable scholars to form strong interdisciplinary teams, to formulate a research program, and to obtain outside funding."

The return on that investment of optimism and encouragement is a significantly changed research environment. Let me explain: when we cast our bread upon the waters with the Incubator Project, we were enormously pleased and somewhat surprised to see that the collaborative and interdisciplinary model was able to stimulate research in the fine arts, in the humanities, and in the social sciences. We were even more delighted to see how the formation of the research teams in each of these groups cut across the divisional and departmental lines of the Faculty, by whose rigidities we had long been confined. The Centre for the Study of Popular Music, for instance, involves colleagues in fine arts, humanities, and social sciences. I think it both extremely interesting that all of these proposals took the form of institutes or centres. These have helped to open up the scholarly community and to lower the departmental walls. In the present research environment in the social sciences and humanities this venturous interdisciplinarity is important.

"...all of these proposals took the form of institutes or centres. These helped to open up the scholarly community and to lower the departmental walls."

These developments in the Faculty of Arts have not undermined the single scholar, working alone on a critical monograph or a creative project. On the contrary, this environment is more, not less, stimulating for scholars, and more, not less, supportive of their research.

I have made money a prominent theme in my comments. This is not because it can take the place of, or have the value of research, but because its presence in adequate quantity is the instrument of institutional flexibility and of growth in the disciplines. Money matters in the support of research in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. It provides the yeast for the brew. It makes some kinds of experimental work possible, and the failure to support research with adequate funding guarantees that some kinds of research will not take place. Any institution — university or faculty — intent on growing a research culture needs to face the fact that choices need to be made. The culture in the petri dish grows best when it is both fed and loved. I've spoken enthusiastically about my Vice-President Research's willingness to allocate some funding for development, and about our Faculty Incubator Project, in part because both of those initiatives came from strained budgets, budgets that were unable to respond to all of the calls made on them. They were declarations of priority.

On the larger scale, too, the funding of research in the humanities and social sciences is an increasingly urgent issue in this country. In the humanities and social sciences, we are shockingly limited in what we are able to achieve by the inadequacy of the budgets supporting our research. In many Canadian universities, it is silently understood that Faculties of Arts (or Humanities, Social Sciences, Fine Arts, General Studies) are there to teach large student numbers and that dollars allocated to those Faculties are given to support the teaching mission. Yet the allocation of funding to Science, Engineering, and Medicine are far more likely to support research. In our university, for instance, the operating budget makes it possible for teaching and research to be thought of as having equal importance in the Faculty of Science.

We are in a very rapidly shifting research environment in this country, and the shifts are especially challenging for the humanities and social sciences. The current policy environment is intently focussed on science and technology, as are the radical changes in the structure of federal support to university research: the allocation of a great deal of new funding to medical research, the disappearance of the Medical Research Council in favour of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). These are seismic shifts in the ground on which we stand: it is widely observed, for instance, that the focus on the science infrastructure of our universities is having a deforming impact on the internal budgeting process of the universities. In addition to that, it is clear that the Government of Canada increasingly sees its support to research as part of a strategy of "innovation" based pretty exclusively on business and applied science in the interests of economic competitiveness and wealth creation. A few months ago, I attended a meeting sponsored by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada which was called for the purpose of "exploring some of the ramifications of making innovation the organizing principle around which to provide public support for university research".

"The current policy environment is intently focussed on science and technology, as are the radical changes in the structure of federal support to university research."

But here is a critical consideration, critical for humanists and social scientists and for Canadian universities. All of that change in policy and funding takes place in the context of an accumulating recognition of the social nature of the problems we face. Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, the 1995 report of the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology, which has had a far-reaching impact on policy, advanced a powerful argument for an integrated research strategy, citing the following rapid social changes as issues of major concern: globalization, trade liberalization, rising government debt, changing demographics, stressed ecosystems, and the galloping pace of technological change (2). A year earlier, the report of the Ontario Premier's Council on Health, Well-being and Social Justice had pointed out the following critical social issues among the young: increasing numbers of children living in poverty; suicide rates three times higher than 30 years ago; family violence; unacceptable rates of functional illiteracy; and high school drop-out rates that are entirely out of keeping with the level of education required to gain entry to knowledge-based jobs. And, said Peter Drucker, writing in the Atlantic Monthly (November, 1994), we haven't really seen anything yet: "The age of social transformation will not come to an end with the year 2000 — it will not even have peaked by then". All of these issues and problems, all of them, are social or cultural in character, even when they are also, like ecosystems and technological change, linked to science and technology.

In these circumstances, it seems obvious that it is the responsibility of Canadian universities to be capable now and in the future of an increasingly vigorous research in the humanities and social sciences. They have a key role to play in any contemporary research strategy, as the interdisciplinary departure of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research makes clear. The future of Canadian research will require strong and flexible university resources in human science research. That will mean change, both for universities struggling to make ends meet and for humanists and social scientists themselves. University presidents, acting together, will need to find a real place in government infrastructure funding for the social sciences and humanities. And those of us who do our work in the wide range of the social sciences and humanities, will need to continue to develop new partnerships, new methodologies, new kinds of dissemination of research and knowledge transfer so that we can contribute fully to the communities we belong to.

"...it seems obvious that it is the responsibility of Canadian universities to be capable now and in the future of an increasingly vigorous research in the humanities and social sciences."

Here is something for us all to remember as we tend the growth in the petri dish: "If the twentieth century was one of social transformations," writes Peter Drucker, "the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations, whose nature cannot be so clear to us now as their necessity."