Applied Research Funding Grant: Community and College Social Innovation Fund

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Building a bridge to change: connecting post-secondary teachers and staff with student diversity

The population of post-secondary students is becoming increasingly diverse. Over time, colleges and universities have seen increasing numbers of students from diverse cultural, ethnic, and first-language groups (including Indigenous students).

But other types of differences are also becoming more common, like cognitive and neuro diversity in students with autism, Asperger’s and ADHD. Institutions are also more aware of gender diversity, both among different gender identities and also through recognition some gender groups are underrepresented, such as women in engineering and computing.

This project hinges on the fundamental notion that educators welcome diversity and embrace the increasing diversity of student population as positive — but at the same time, speaks directly to the reality that supporting an increasingly diverse student body requires more resources, awareness, and new knowledge.

The project sought to develop an effective model to help post-secondary teachers and academic staff engage with increasing diversity positively, sensitively, and strategically. The objective is to leverage the power of community-based expertise to drive responses to diversity, and empower all participants in the diversity conversation.

To do that, the project used an indigenous framework to allow organic engagement at many levels within communities and institutions. Based on that framework, the project team created a series of panels, workshops and tools to help people engage with diversity. Some of the workshops so far have been on the Culture of mentoring; Language and diversity; and Gender diversity.

The project is in its second year and the team is running small, customized workshops for individual departments, focused on student resiliency, teamwork, mentoring and diversity. The team is also designing a digital diversity map, which will be an open digital resource to link the project, resources, and people to other diversity projects, resources, and people. The map, like the project framework, involves a strong research creation aspect informed by a Coast Salish aesthetic, envisioned by artist and collaborator Aaron “Splash” Nelson-Moody.

Students and highly qualified people have been engaged at every stage of this project and are intensifying their involvement this year.

Funded by: BCIT Faculty and Staff Association, Community and College Social Innovation Fund

About British Columbia Institute of Technology

For over 50 years, the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has been a leader among Canadian post-secondary institutions. Offering an applied, hands-on education that... Learn more
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Evaluating Neighbourhood Policing

Relations between the public and their police are often strained these days — which has made finding a way to defuse tension and build trust a high priority for communities across Canada. Once an effort has been made, however, it’s important to ask if what’s being done is working.

That’s why Humber College and the Toronto Police Service are collaborating on an evaluation of the Neighbourhood Policing Program introduced in May 2013. Its goals were to reduce crime and increase the public’s safety and its trust in police. Through the program, special teams of Toronto police officers were assigned to some of Toronto’s more troubled neighbourhoods. The teams weren’t just beefing up street patrols — they were out, meeting people and groups, talking about issues in the community, trying, where possible, to prevent crime.

Preliminary results suggest neighbourhood policing is making positive changes; completed results are expected in 2018. However, while the thorough evaluation of the impact of program will take some time yet, this policing-academic collaboration is providing training opportunities for students. The research team from the School of Social and Community Services is conducting surveys and focus groups with adults and youth in the communities with neighbourhood police teams. Students from several programs are gaining valuable experience in facilitating focus groups, doing surveys and analyzing data.

The project will also contribute to a tool kit for other police services that want to know what public-engagement strategies might be effective, and may strengthen the relationship between the Toronto police and the public by singling out the most effective strategies for good police and public interaction.

Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

About Humber Polytechnic

Humber Polytechnic is one of Canada’s leading postsecondary institutions, combining deep theoretical learning with applied, hands-on experience. Humber offers a wide variety of credentials including... Learn more
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A community-built response to improving access to education

Deciding on post-secondary education is a big step that can be particularly difficult for students who’ve grown up in areas with lower socio-economic status. To counter that, Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario has developed “City School by Mohawk,” a community-based initiative that aims to break down barriers to education and employment for residents of some of the city’s struggling neighbourhoods.

The goal of City School by Mohawk is to overcome the post-secondary attainment gap that may affect residents of communities struggling with poverty and other causes of marginalization. To do that, it has brought college programming and services directly to residents in easily accessible downtown “learning hubs.” There, City School offers tuition-free college credit courses and workshops, taught by Mohawk faculty and staff, to encourage potential students to take gradual steps on a postsecondary pathway.

The two City School hubs offer college courses in a classroom environment, giving students a sense of what’s involved in attending college, as well as the chance to explore different topics they think they might like to study. And those who successfully complete the free course can earn a credit to be applied when they enroll at Mohawk.

“City school is a first for Hamilton and Ontario,” says Jim Vanderveken, dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at Mohawk College. “No other college in the province is taking community engagement to this level.” He describes City School by Mohawk as a basecamp on the journey to post-secondary education. Putting a college education within reach of everyone in the community is a priority for Dean Vanderveken and the college.

Research on the effectiveness of the City School project is being led by Dr. Alan Bourke, who is studying the perceptions students have of City School, and whether they succeed. Results of his work so far indicate significant promise: participants have high levels of satisfaction with their learning experience. Students report developing confidence in their academic abilities and building a connection with the college through a strong support system that advocates for their interests and aspirations.

Among a number of other positive findings, students appreciated the passion of their City School faculty, the flexibility of the course delivery schedules, and valued the child-care offered.

City School has generated significant interest in other communities tackling poverty and social marginalization. Mohawk also has plans to launch of a mobile City School.

Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

About Mohawk College

Mohawk College educates and serves 30,000 full-time, part-time and apprenticeship students at three campuses in Hamilton, Ontario. More than 1,200 international students from over 70... Learn more
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A voyage to the bottom of the sea — by sonar

Understanding the ocean, its creatures and possibilities requires understanding where it ends: the ocean floor. But mapping that remote territory is by no means easy. A team from Nova Scotia Community College recently worked with industry partners to evaluate a new approach to imaging the bottom of the sea.

The partners were evaluating R2Sonic multibeam echosounders, an improved method of sonar backscatter imaging that greatly increases the information returned by sonar surveys of the ocean floor. Types of data that can be derived from a multibeam echosounder survey include water depth, which can be used to show the elevation of the sea floor, its reflectivity, or backscatter, which indicates how hard and rough the bottom is, and water column data including the size and strength of reflectors such as bubbles, fish and plankton in the water.

According to project partner R2Sonic, their new technology allows systems to collect backscatter data at multiple frequencies in a single pass, with one vessel and one sonar system — which results in considerable savings in time and cost.

“The capability to image the seafloor simultaneously with widely separated acoustic frequencies will allow for improved classification and characterization capabilities in addition to a host of other applications that are yet to be discovered,” R2Sonic’s website says.

Leading the evaluation was Dr. Jonathan Beaudoin, chief scientist at QPS evaluation services, who worked with Dr. Craig Brown of Nova Scotia Community College and with Mike Brissette of R2Sonic. The trials were conducted in Halifax’s Bedford Basin in August of 2016. During two sets of field trials, QPS provided software support for acquiring and processing data.

This project will save industries (such as fisheries) considerable cost because it will allow them to map larger areas of the ocean floor using fewer resources, including less vessel time. Industry partners have incorporated this technology into their operations and use the results in their decision making processes. Students were hired as research assistants to work on the project.

Partner(s): QPS, R2Sonic
Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund, NSERC

About Nova Scotia Community College

Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) is committed to building Nova Scotia’s economy and quality of life through education and innovation, transforming Nova Scotia one learner... Learn more
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Aclarus

Easy access to high-quality drinking water can be a challenge for people outside urban areas — and it was to improve that access that Aclarus Ozone Water Systems approached Lambton College in Sarnia for help to test, develop and optimize its ozone water purification system.

Aclarus, based in Peterborough, Ontario, specializes in water purification through the use of ozone technology. Ozone, an inorganic molecule, is extremely efficient at removing bacteria, pesticides, odours, chemicals (and more) from water.

In June of 2015, Aclarus partnered with the Lambton Water Centre at Lambton College on a research project to validate its system’s effectiveness in treating and disinfecting bacterial contamination in drinking water. The project included installation of a remote monitoring system that allows the consumer or Aclarus technical staff to monitor the system from a smart phone or central control station.

Dino Evangelista, coordinator of the Lambton Water Centre, led the research project together with faculty researcher Kevin Ryan. Two students from Lambton’s Instrumentation Control and Engineering Technology program worked with them.

The research project with Lambton allowed Aclarus to improve and validate its technology, while at the same time improving the customer experience by creating remote monitoring options for the system. Due to the success of this project, Aclarus is planning to continue doing research projects with the Lambton Water Centre.

Partner(s): Aclarus
Funded by: Applied Research and Development (ARD) Grant, Community and College Social Innovation Fund, NSERC, Ontario Centres of Excellence

About Lambton College

As a post-secondary leader in education, training and research, Lambton College has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. In addition to a significant rise in... Learn more
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Looking for a Way to Nurture Systems to Feeds Us

Agricultural land is an irreplaceable natural resource and we are not looking after it as we should, according to Kent Mullinix, director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

“Nations and provinces and municipalities create policy and law and regulation all the time to advance their vision, their agenda, and somehow we have decided a sustainable food system isn’t worth doing that for,” Mullinix said in a telephone interview.

Mullinix is the lead researcher on Fostering Regional Food Systems, a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, from its Community and College Social Innovation Fund.

He and his colleagues are studying the importance, potential and challenges of implementing sustainable regional food systems—which he defines as “all the elements that collectively contribute to production, distribution, purchasing and consumption of food and handling the waste associated with it.” Regional food systems build local economies, rather than shipping money and jobs elsewhere.

There are good reasons to move back from our globalized food system, Mullinix said, including that climate change, transportation costs and other factors are making it unsustainable and unaffordable, while foreign agricultural practices may be unsafe.

The problem is that planners have ignored food systems despite their essential role in keeping us all alive. Agricultural land is under pressure from development — nowhere more than in Richmond, B.C., where Mullinix works, next door to the hottest real-estate market in the country. B.C. does have an “Agricultural Land Reserve,” protected for agriculture. But it fails to encourage regional food systems in several ways, Mullinix said.

Preserved land does not have to be farmed. B.C.’s land reserve policy does nothing to prevent speculation, putting prices well out of reach for people who might actually want to farm. (Wealthy landowners renting to farmers is known as feudalism, Mullinix pointed out, and probably not a model we want in this country).

Earlier research by the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems suggests about one-third of the unfarmed land in the agricultural reserve in Surrey could be productive, and — with small-scale single farmers doing community-focused, intensive farming — could create 1,200 jobs, satisfy Surrey’s needs for 27 crops and animal products six months of the year, while generating $77 million in net income.

The researchers will assess land value and ownership trends since 1977 and try to determine the extent regional food systems can supply local food needs, create jobs, and contribute to environmental stewardship. They will also create the world’s first web-based, open-access regional food system research and information hub.

“I am an agricultural scientist,” Mullinix said. “I have witnessed the industrialization of agriculture and what it has done to farmers, to food, to the economy, to communities and the environment. I have witnessed it, and I know there is a better way to do food systems.”

Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund

About Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Established by the government of British Columbia in 1981, Kwantlen, now Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has four campuses located in the Metro Vancouver region of British... Learn more
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Going Deep in the Brain to Control Outward Attention

Two researchers at Collège Montmorency, in Laval, are introducing a new approach to helping students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — training them to reach deep inside to modulate their brain waves to control attention.

Andrea Szabo and Hélène Brisebois were both practicing psychologists before they became professors of psychology at Collège Montmorency, and both were struck by how many students with ADHD were struggling to succeed at the college. Now, having received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a part of its Community and College Social Innovation Fund, they are developing a neurofeedback lab on campus.

There have been services available for students with ADHD for some time, Szabo said in an interview. They may be allowed extra time to write exams, or taught strategies for learning with ADHD. But generally, colleges offer fewer services than high school, while the work and the environment are both more demanding.

“You can’t just keep teaching kids strategies. They know the strategies,” said Szabo. She said as neuropsychologists, they were interested in using brain-focused techniques to help people manage anxiety and depression; neurofeedback is one of them. The two wondered it if it might help students with ADHD.

In neurofeedback, participants are taught how to control their brain waves. ADHD produces a certain pattern of brain waves (which can be sensed only through an electroencephalogram). By connecting sensors to the scalp, machinery can pick up brain wave patterns and display the data on a computer screen.

With training, where participants are given positive reinforcement when they learn to adjust their brain waves from the slow patterns typical of ADHD into more active waves that signal attention and focus. With practice, they can do it without the machine.

Szabo and Brisebois decided to set up a neurofeedback lab on campus in rooms donated by the college. The specialized equipment was lent by Thought Technology, and partnership with the micro-encephalography lab of the Institut de neurologie de Montréal allows sophisticated neuroimaging of the effect of the training on the brain structure.

Beyond expanding knowledge on ADHD neurophysiology and increasing the possibility of managing its symptoms with neurofeedback, this project could lead, long-term, to the technique being introduced into other educational settings to help more students with ADHD — many of whom could not otherwise afford this treatment — get a better chance to succeed in school.

The project will generate considerable data on ADHD for study, but Szabo and Brisebois are driven by their desire to help students affected by it. “That is really our idea, to try to implement this in other cégeps, and then from there to the secondary school level,” she said. “That way, when kids go to cégep, when they arrive they will be more confident already.”

Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund

About Collège Montmorency

Le Collège Montmorency s’est hissé parmi les cégeps les plus importants du Québec avec plus de 7000 étudiants à l’enseignement régulier. Seul cégep public de... Learn more