How to Build a Research Shop: Workshop

The Community Engaged Scholarship Institute organized and hosted the workshop How to Build a Research Shop on May 26^th, 2015 at Algonquin College as a pre-conference workshop to the CUExpo. The workshop was facilitated by Linda Hawkins (CESI), Norbert Steinhaus (Living Knowledge Network), Henk Mulder (University of Groningen), Todd Barr (Trent Community Research Centre), Lindsey Thomson (CESI), Sara Crann (CESI), and John Marris (Trent Community Research Centre).

The workshop was targeted to participants interested in creating their own structures to provide responses to local or regional research needs. Staff and student facilitators from the University of Guelph discussed how to build, run and support a thriving shop, while presenters from the Living Knowledge Network, Groningen Science Shop, and Trent Community Research Centre shared further examples and explored evaluation considerations. Topics discussed also included institutional mechanisms, required resources, steps in brokering projects and how to engage citizens and university actors.

This workshop led participants through a series of questions to help them create their own vision for a Research Shop, build resource strategies and identify first steps. Attention was given to national contexts and opportunities to adapt their own models.

Some of the questions asked and answered include:

• Why are you interested in building a new mechanism for partnered research?
• Who are your potential stakeholders and what resources do you/they bring to building research partnerships?
• What values, principles, and dreams will guide your decision making?
• What are the details of your local context for community-university partnerships and current problematics and possibilities?
• Who will do the research? Where will projects come from? Who will be results be fore? How will they be communicated? How will you address quality and impact?
• What will happen in between specific projects? Who will hold the relationships? How will you ensure that your work is transformational for the community and not only transactional?
• How might your efforts affect other systems and processes in your institution or community?