Research Impact Canada Annual Meeting

Toronto, September 17-20, 2019: 30 brokers from 15 RIC member universities. Six people from partner organizations. Three dinners. One amazing knowledge mobilization experience. 

Every year RIC member institutions come together to assess progress against goals and to look to the forthcoming year. This coming year will be the last year in the current 2017-2020 strategic plan with a new lead institution to be identified and starting July 1, 2020. 

We opened with a smudging and indigenous welcome by Clayton Shirt, father, husband and knowledge keeper from the Wolf Clan of Saddle Lake Alberta. In addition to smudging we all got to share our personal and professional journeys over indigenous lands. The focus was on looking bask over the last year, so we could plan for the last 9 months to June 30, 2020.  

On September 18 we reviewed three key pieces of input: 

  • Results of Phase 1 of RIC Evaluation 
  • Goals identified from RIC 2018 Annual Meeting (Vancouver)  
  • Plans to support knowledge mobilization for Future Skills Centre 

This allowed us to short list ideas for further development on September 19. The ensuing design day produced the following six goals for the remaining 9 months of the current RIC Strategic Plan 

 

  1. RIC Prize: referred to Governance Steering Committee 
  1. Build local RIC campus participation: referred to Lead Institution 
  1. New member kit: referred to Lead Institution 
  1. RIC List Serve: complete 
  1. Rotate Dr. RIC: referred to PD Committee 
  1. Member Needs Survey: referred to PD Committee 

 

In addition, we had a bunch of other highlights 

  • Evaluation Committee will continue with Phase II of RIC Evaluation 
  • Communications Committee will explore options for document sharing/repository 
  • Governance Steering Committee will develop a plan for investing RIC funds to build our own capacity 
  • PD Committee will maintain funds in the KMbuddy account to fund future proposals 
  • RIC and ARIS will continue to collaborate on an impact and engagement tool kit that will be disseminated internationally through INORMS 
  • 12 RIC brokers provided peer review to nine impact case studies from U. Brighton 
  • We discussed failures as well as success. One group presented on our inability to develop a campus-based peer to peer network while another presented on how to manage a communications crisis. 
  • We discussed and drilled down into a Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Curriculum 
  • RIC will formally collaborate on the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum 2020 

We ended with a trip to the Toronto Argonaughts football game vs. Calgary Steelers. Toronto lost but we were all winners after attending the RIC annual meeting. In a testament to the value of the meeting to members, Terry Campbell (U. Ottawa, her first RIC Annual Meeting) said, “This day [Day 1] was worth the $5,000 membership fee we paid”. 

I trust that sums up all the other great feedback we received during and after the meeting. 

Next year we will be hosted by the University of Winnipeg where we will be working with a new lead institution and looking to deepen our knowledge mobilization services to Canada.