The Role of Communications in Research

Chair — Malcolm Ramsay
Other resource people — Kathryn Warden, Cindy Paquette and Fran Walley
Reporter — Isobel M. Findlay

That the morning session on this topic was attended only by three facilitators (Malcolm Ramsay, Cindy Paquette, Kathryn Warden) is symptomatic of an institutional undervaluing and under-resourcing of the activity of communicating — and of the belief that it is someone else's job, that somehow it would interfere with one's own work and priorities.

The well-attended and productive afternoon session focused on revaluing communications in ways that would encourage appropriate forms and levels of institutional support. The following are some of the key points that emerged in discussions.

• Communicating research to broader publics is a matter not only of public interest but of self-interest. There is no public funding without convincing representations of the worth of our research beyond our own immediate community.
   
• We need multiple communications strategies and increased resources and personnel to ensure that they are managed effectively. As well as pursuing costly professional forms of communication (such as U of Toronto's very professional and widely disseminated annual report), we should continue to use the less costly means of disseminating research findings: meetings, colloquia, public lectures, media interviews, celebratory occasions.
   
• We need to bring our publics to campus. The Huskie Athletics program continues to be one of our best means of connecting with the broader community. The challenge is to make our other activities equally attractive. As long as resources were available, the natural sciences museum program used to welcome thousands of children, teachers, parents to campus. We are missing the opportunity to welcome our publics in directed ways that benefit not only the sciences but the wider university community.
   
• Faculty (and not only the President) need to go to their publics off campus. We need to revalue the activities of talking to schools, media, service clubs, public library, Chamber of Commerce, public servants — and of writing for the StarPhoenix, popular and regional publications, Maclean's and the Globe and Mail (as well as Nature, Yale Law Review, Publications of the Modern Languages Association).
   
• We need to value communications in and as research. Rogers Hollingsworth and the panel on Building Research Success gave eloquent testimony to the role of communications in building and consolidating research teams and in identifying and focusing research projects. Research is not a discrete product to be communicated but a social activity to be undertaken. It is a process to be negotiated among disciplinary, interdisciplinary, internal and external communities as we take collective ownership of our questions and solutions. The Community- University Research Alliances model (a grants program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) is exemplary here.
  
  Although not all disciplinary and interdisciplinary initiatives are equally accessible to the wider community, we can all learn to communicate the excitement of scholarly pursuit so as to involve and encourage people to take pride in research activities on campus whether or not there are immediate economic or other benefits.
   
• We need resources and personnel to ensure that existing and any new communications initiatives on campus are effectively coordinated. With the limited resources at present comes fragmentation within and between communications groups — and many missed opportunities. We need to coordinate efforts by the various communications offices, high school liaison officers, the Speaker's Bureau, MindFields, conference office, Alumni Relations as well as initiatives in colleges and departments. We need to inform new as well as established faculty of programs and possibilities.
   
• We need to expand our sense of our publics inside and outside the academy — from the local to the national and international, from colleagues (and potential co-investigators) across disciplines, to students and parents, to funding agencies, to elected political figures and civil servants, to the Chamber of Commerce. We need to consider who we want/need to target — and what their needs and interests are. We need to give them reasons to choose to listen to us.
   
• We need resources for more pro-active efforts to ensure positive stories in the media. More universities are investing in communicating/connecting with their publics. The U of Alberta, for example, has a $1 million budget to sustain 10 writers (with additional people at the college level).
   
• We need to use the Internet creatively. Currently there is significant uneven development across campus in the construction and maintenance of web pages. Some sectors have the resources and personnel, while others operate on a shoestring. Some sites (Agricultural Economics, for example) are exemplary while others are sterile and maintained in a haphazard fashion. We need more linking and long-term solutions that might include, for instance, giving student experience (and marketable skills) as well as full or partial course credit for web site development.
   
• Finally, we need to revalue communications while refining our goals and audiences. We need to value our differences as well as connections and compatibilities as researchers. Instead of whining, over-reacting, self- congratulating, we might devise counter strategies (such as ranking governments). We all need to be part of the solution, which will take care, time, work, and money.