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REDUCING ADMINISTRATIVE BARRIERS TO RESEARCH
VPRI portfolio lead
Shelley Gair
Executive Director, Office of the Vice President Research & Innovation
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Challenge
Faculty members have identified 鈥渓ack of time鈥� as the biggest constraint in increasing their research output. For individual faculty members, balancing the competing demands of research, teaching and service is challenging. For department chairs, school directors and deans, balancing the need to deliver academic programming鈥攁nd to support a dynamic research environment鈥攊s also challenging.
Action
Consulting with deans, chairs and directors, ADRs and 大象传媒 Faculty Relations, we will identify barriers to availability and effective use of research time for faculty members. Best practices across faculties, schools and departments will be shared and places where flexibility exists in the system (e.g., course scheduling/stacking) and within the current collective agreement will be examined.
Project Goals
Begin consultations with several Faculties to help identify administrative barriers that researchers are experiencing that take time away from conducting research
- October 2025
Ongoing meetings with other units (Research Accounting, Research Services, Finance, Procurement, ITS, HR, etc.) to share feedback and get their perspective on issues as well as follow up conversations with faculty members and administrative staff within the Faculties. - August 2025
Information gathered from the three Faculties through interviews, meetings and surveys, and prioritized issues based on importance to the Faculty, commonalities with other two Faculties (and Uniforum survey), and impact (both short and long term).鈥� - July 2025
Faculty of Health Sciences volunteered to participate in the project, and consultations with them were subsequently initiated. - April 2025
Consultations have started with two Faculties 鈥� Faculty of Science and Faculty of Communications, Art, and Technology (FCAT) to better understand the current administrative barriers thar researchers in their Faculty are experiencing that negatively impact research. These faculties were chosen because their strategic plans align well with the goals of this project, and they represent very different research methodologies/needs, which will help provide a different perspective on administrative barriers experienced.
Issues/challenges are prioritized, and a plan is drafted to address these challenges.
- September 2025
A number of administrative issues have been identified. Based on the collected data, we have determined the four highest-impact administrative barriers and are actively working through them.