Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 70.27
Liaison Juanita Van Norman
Submission Date Aug. 16, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

University of Manitoba
AC-10: Support for Research

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00 Christie Nairn
Director
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing program to encourage students in multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct research in sustainability? :
Yes

A brief description of the student research program, including the incentives provided and any positive outcomes during the previous three years:

The Experience Research Program for Undergraduate Students:
Professors at the University of Manitoba, through their research, scholarly work and creative activities are contributing to the cultural, economic, health and social well-being of the citizens of Manitoba, Canada and the world. Professors work individually or in teams to analyze challenging and complex issues to make our lives better and more meaningful. They collectively bring more than $160 million from external sources, on a competitive basis, to support their research, scholarly work and creative activities and to nurture young minds to become trailblazers, pioneers, and innovators. This program allows students to be mentored full-time with a professor of their choice for 16 weeks, to receive a $7,000.00 award, and to gain valuable experience in their field of interest. This year, the university is pleased to offer 172 URAs, up to 10 of which are dedicated to Indigenous students, and two awards are earmarked for community-based research projects within the Social Sciences and Humanities including the CERG program.

NSERC Strategic Partnership Grants:
The objective of the NSERC Strategic Partnership Grants is to increase research and training in targeted areas that could strongly influence Canada's economy, society and/or environment within the next ten years. NSERC will fund the direct costs of a 3 - year project including students, post-docs, consumables, and equipment for research in Advance Manufacturing, Environment and Agriculture, Information and Communications Technologies, Natural Resource and Energy.

Syngenta Graduate Scholarship:
Syngenta Graduate Scholarship is for a student enrolled full-time in Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba conducting research in sustainable agriculture. The areas included are environmental quality and resource management, integrated pest management, introduction of new technologies, economic viability and rural community sustainability. The award is a total endowment of $200,000.

University of Manitoba Success Through Wellness Grants:
The University of Manitoba’s Success Through Wellness Grants have been created to fund projects that engage the campus community to foster positive mental health and wellbeing and create a supportive campus environment through new initiatives (e.g. activities, events, projects, applied research proposals) or enhancements to existing supports with a proven track record. Proposals should be clearly aligned with one or more of the six goals articulated in Success Through Wellness, which represents a call to action for all members of the University. Awards are valued up to $10,000. All members of the community, staff, faculty or students, are eligible to apply.


Does the institution have a program to encourage faculty from multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct research in sustainability topics?:
Yes

A brief description of the faculty research program, including the incentives provided and any positive outcomes during the previous three years:

University of Manitoba Success Through Wellness Grants:
The University of Manitoba’s Success Through Wellness Grants have been created to fund projects that engage the campus community to foster positive mental health and wellbeing and create a supportive campus environment through new initiatives (e.g. activities, events, projects, applied research proposals) or enhancements to existing supports with a proven track record. Proposals should be clearly aligned with one or more of the six goals articulated in Success Through Wellness, which represents a call to action for all members of the University. Awards are valued up to $10,000. All members of the community, staff, faculty or students, are eligible to apply.

Indigenous Initiatives Fund:
The University of Manitoba created the Indigenous Initiatives Fund to support unit-based projects that further the University's goals and priorities associated with Indigenous achievement as stated in Taking Our Place, the U of M's Strategic Plan, 2015-2020. Faculties, schools, colleges, libraries and administrative units were invited to submit proposals to the fund in the fall of 2016. The following are examples of 22 projects approved for funding and announced in January, 2017:
A Collaboratory Indigenous Curriculum and Teaching Practice in Western Canadian Universities: $33,774
Indigenous Designer-in-Residence Program: $50,000

Critical Environments Research Group:
The Critical Environments Research Group (CERG), is an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars all working in the environmental humanities at the University of Manitoba, with affiliated faculty at the University of Winnipeg. CERG aims to foster a unique venue for collaboration and scholarly support around the environmental humanities in western Canada. The mandate is to promote increased research and teaching collaborations that bring together critical scholarly perspectives on environmental sustainability, equity, and justice. Scholars involved with CERG share the conviction that the environment cannot be understood as a standalone category; instead scholarship is oriented around the notion that the environment should be analysed as a set of relations, encompassing economic, social, political, cultural, legal, and health frames as well. Work is all around the common theme of human-environment relations but brings different disciplinary and analytical backgrounds to the conversation.

Disability, Culture and Diversity Research Group:
The interdisciplinary nature of the Disability, Culture and Diversity Research Group has fostered a conceptually and methodologically diverse program of research to:
- Explore factors that facilitate and impede healthy lifestyles and enhance quality of life for people with disabilities across the lifespan; and
Understand the instrumental effects of leisure and physical activity for people with disabilities across the lifespan.
- To address this mission, research in the group is focused on quality of life for persons with a mental disability in four areas: factors that facilitate and impede social integration and community belonging; later life options; independence; and the contribution of recreation, leisure, and physical activity.

Education for Sustainable Well-Being Research Group:
The Education for Sustainable Well-Being Research Group is an interdisciplinary research group of the University of Manitoba, housed in the Faculty of Education. The research programme of the research group consists in the commitment to undertake research that focuses on issues linked to education for sustainable well-being. Research projects as part of this research programme are concerned with education as a means for human and societal development for sustainable well-being. The main objectives of the Education for Sustainable Well-Being Research Group are:
-To develop and engage in a collaborative interdisciplinary research program on the role and the possibilities that education as a means for human and societal development for sustainable well-being;
-To promote and support undergraduate and graduate education and research in the area of education for sustainable well-being; and
-To enhance the education for sustainable well-being of all humans with a focus on Manitoba and Canada.
The group organizes conferences and symposiums to develop interests, knowledge and skills in relation to sustainable well-being research. In 2017 the seminar organized was called the Education for Sustainability Leaders Seminar.


Has the institution published written policies and procedures that give positive recognition to interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research during faculty promotion and/or tenure decisions?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s support for interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research, including any positive outcomes during the previous three years:

Co-operative research currently takes place in several research units at the University through formal or informal arrangements made by individuals to facilitate the sharing of research efforts between departments/units. To facilitate such interdisciplinary research and also to enable the contributions of scholars and researchers who are not faculty members at the University of Manitoba, the Adjunct Professor Policy was created. Furthermore, the University of Manitoba's Promotion and Tenure Policies assess performance in research based on collaboration.
The Centre for Human Rights Research also seeks proposals from the University of Manitoba faculty members who want to explore new collaborative interdisciplinary research projects. Priority is given to pre-tenured faculty and to research projects that fit in one of the following focus areas:
-Indian residential schools & truth and reconciliation
-Sexual and reproductive rights
-Human right to water
-Documenting human rights
Some of the projects from the Centre include the creation of a pamphlet on Canada’s new (and confusing) sex work laws done in collaboration with Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition and the joint effort of researchers at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg and Brock who teamed up with First Nation citizens and other community partners to develop new ways to confront public apathy about the serious problem of poor drinking water and wastewater disposal in First Nation communities.


Does the institution have ongoing library support for sustainability research and learning?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s library support for sustainability research, including any positive outcomes during the previous three years:

The University of Manitoba MSpace Open Access Repository has a Sustainability subject group for Graduate Research Theses and Dissertations as well as a Sustainable Agriculture subject group for Research Publications. U of M researchers can also browse electronic journals by subject, including Earth and Environmental Science, through the BrowZine Library repository.


The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

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