ResearchImpact universities were in the news as we ended 2009 and started 2010.
On December 23, 2009 York’s work on Green Economic Transformation with partners in South Simcoe was featured in the Bradford West Gwillimbury Topic and received wider readership in Metroland. You can read the whole article here. ResearchImpact (York) brokered relationships between a researcher (Gerde Wekerle, FES), 2 graduate students and Nottawasaga Futures which is hosting the graduate students who are funded through the MITACS Accelerate program. According to one of the students, Susan Swail, “The plan is to develop a summary of best practices or benchmarks to work toward in creating sustainable communities by focusing on economic development that considers the triple bottom line” (economic, social, environmental impacts). These best practices will inform green decisions made by local businesses and local governments. Taking a lesson from ResearchImpact (Memorial), this is ResearchImpact (York)’s first move into regional economic development which is the domain of the Harris Centre at Memorial. We will seek to build on this success with Nottawasaga Futures and partners in the South Simcoe Economic Alliance.
And speaking of ResearchImpact (Memorial and York)… our two KM operations were featured in an article by the Globe and Mail’s Elizabeth Church on how York University and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador are making research and researchers accessible through on line formats. We have previously blogged about York’s Research Snapshots and Memorial’s yaffle and now these tools made it into the national media with an article released on January 2, 2010. You can read the whole article “Web tools aim to open the gates to the ivory tower” and also join the readers who are commenting on the article.
Both of these stories were reported in Y File on January 5 and January 6.
And finally, ResearchImpact (Memorial) and yaffle were also featured in a story by the Washington DC based Chronicle of Higher Education on January 6, 2010. Part of the Chronicle’s Wired Campus series, the article was titled “Canadian University Creates Matchmaking Tool for Research”.
Such local, national and international press helps to grow the impact of ResearchImpact.