As more faculty members pursued scholarly activity and received Tri-Agency funding, the university’s internal support system grew. Research policies were developed, a Research Ethics Board was established, and the Office of Research Services was created to help faculty members grow their scholarly programs, provide internal funding, and navigate the external funding process.
Just as researchers in the social sciences at MacEwan in the early 2000s and 2010s had to figure out other partnerships to receive tri-council funding, so did researchers in the natural sciences.
Dr. Erin Walton, associate professor in the Department of Physical Sciences, recalls applying for her first Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant in 2011 through an adjunct position she held at another university.
Just a few years later, Dr. Samuel Mugo and Dr. Jonathan Withey received the university’s first NSERC college grants. Then, in 2014, the university’s first NSERC Discovery Grants were awarded to MacEwan faculty members Dr. Jeffrey Andrews (Math), Dr. Trevor Hamilton (Psychology), Dr. Christopher Striemer (Psychology), Dr. Nicolae Strungaru (Math) and Dr. Adi Tcaciuc (Math).
In Canada, NSERC Discovery Grants are the gold standard, providing a multi-year, sustained source of funding that allows researchers to develop programs with long-term goals, says Dr. Walton, who was able to renew her Discovery Grant through MacEwan in 2018 and held the position of Board of Governors Research Chair from 2019 to 2021.
“Recognizing that our faculty are capable of carrying out this quality of research speaks to the way funders and other universities see us – that they value undergraduate research and recognize the quality of research that can happen at this level,” she says.
Even with all this change, one thing remained steadfast: the university’s focus on students.
“Training undergraduate students is rooted in our mandate – it’s the very reason we exist,” says Dr. Monk. “When we hire new faculty, we make it clear that teaching is weighted twice as much as scholarship. We also try to blur the distinction – that here, teaching, research and creative activity should truly complement one another.”
Teaching provides faculty members with a pool of curious, engaged undergraduate students, some of whom may have plans to enter graduate programs and likely more who may never have even considered getting involved in research. Having access to faculty members keen to share their scholarly interests with students is one of the benefits of studying at MacEwan, says Dr. Monk.
“Whether they realize it or not, undergraduate students expect to study with scholars. Their expectation is not to have a professor just work from a textbook that someone else has written but to be taught by people who generate knowledge, themselves, and whose own research and creative activity contributes to the fields in which they are instructing.”
To encourage student involvement in scholarly activities, the university established the Undergraduate Student Research Initiatives (USRI) grants in 2010, followed by the MacEwan University Student eJournal (MUSe) and Student Research Day – now part of the annual Month of Scholarship celebration held each April.