JRP Submission ID#156
Title: Faculty Perceptions About Institutional Barriers to Building Student Research Capacity: Illustrations From a Cross-Canada Interdisciplinary Rural Research Project
Section: Main Article
Submitted: Dec 17, 2008
Size: About 7,500 words

ABSTRACT: As part of a long tradition, university faculty have been utilizing students to meet the increasing demands for interdisciplinary research by federal funding agencies. As faculty engage in student training to meet these demands, it has been suggested that some educational institutions, particularly predominantly undergraduate universities, lack appropriate policies and infrastructure to support student involvement in research. Using the [project title] project as a case study, we explore faculty experiences with institutional barriers to supporting student participation in interdisciplinary research. Findings indicate a range of barriers related to human resource management, structural arrangements, operations, policies, and financial constraints that impact how or if faculty are able to incorporate students into this form of research. In particular, pressures associated with tenure and promotion, and inappropriate policies that guide research operations, do not support student research training and development during their academic status or during transition periods between their research degrees. Faculty also have limited or inappropriate mechanisms for sharing resources across educational institutions to facilitate student engagement in interdisciplinary research activities.

KEYWORDS: student research training; institutional barriers; Canada

EXCERPTS:

While previous research has explored barriers to student engagement and training within interdisciplinary research teams [citations], the complications that institutional policies and practices may have on faculty efforts to build student capacity through interdisciplinary research remains unclear. Using the [project title] project as a case study, this paper explores institutional barriers that faculty confront as they work to build student research capacity and involvement at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. This paper begins by briefly defining interdisciplinary research and describing the institutional supports and constraints that can guide the execution of research activities. Following a review of the exploratory methodology used for this study, we describe faculty experiences with institutional barriers to incorporating and supporting student participation in an interdisciplinary research project. . . .

While some of the findings may be specific to interdisciplinary projects, cross-university projects, or to rural research, others speak more generally to the role of student research training and capacity building through research employment opportunities. Further study could assess the different capacity and institutional constraints of predominantly undergraduate universities as they strive to develop the next generation of researchers. We know little about the type and quality of institutional support that students pursue and receive in a complex, interdisciplinary research setting. . . .
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Reviewers familiar with such issues and contexts may kindly respond.

DP
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