The Harris Centre Annual Report 2016–2017 Creating connections to build resilience
Message from the President Dr. Gary Kachanoski President and Vice Chancellor, Memorial University
As president and vice chancellor of Memorial University, it’s my pleasure to present the Harris Centre’s 2016-2017 annual report. Founded in 1925 by the people of the province as a living memorial, Memorial’s history ties this university directly and deliberately to the social, economic, and cultural fabric of the place, and offers all members of the university the opportunity and responsibility to contribute not only to the university, but also to the province. Through ground-breaking research, teaching and learning, and public engagement by faculty, students, and staff, the university is helping grow the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador. It cultivates and mobilizes the talent that helps build a culture of innovation, thereby fulfilling its special obligation to this place.
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The Harris Centre plays a primary role in this relationship as a connector for knowledge mobilization, linking Memorial with groups all over the province. In many cases, partnerships are formed in direct response to a community’s request based on local needs or challenges, and lead to tangible solutions that have a real-world impact. As the Harris Centre continues to evolve and fulfill its role in coordinating the university’s work in regional policy and development, I look forward to seeing continued public engagement partnerships between Memorial and the people, communities, and organizations of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Photos: Chris Hammond
Message from the Executive Director Dr. Rob Greenwood Executive Director of Public Engagement and the Harris Centre, Memorial University
Another year at the Harris Centre! As our President has stated, Memorial is a public institution serving the public good, and during this time of fiscal challenge, community-university engagement on important provincial issues is more important than ever. At the Harris Centre, our work is to bring clarity and context to public policy and regional development, connecting the needs of the province with the resources of Memorial. We are currently working towards a new five-year plan, with input from people and organizations all across Newfoundland and Labrador. Collaboration in service of the sustainability of Newfoundland and Labrador, and supporting informed discussion on public policy and regional development remain the core of our mandate. We are proud to continue brokering MUN resources, providing
facilitation and planning support, and leadership and platforms to address public policy and regional development needs, province-wide. The work of the Harris Centre encapsulates how teaching, research, and public engagement can be integrated, cultivating connections between the university and this province to address real needs and opportunities. We are committed to this place, and stand ready, and prepared, to work with government, business, and civil society to tackle the major challenges facing the province at this crucial time in our history.
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Working together
Nain
Happy Valley-Goose Bay
Where we’ve been Regional Workshops are where ideas and opportunities turn into partnerships and solutions. The ingredients? Flipcharts, markers, and community members and leaders coming together with Memorial faculty, students, and staff for great conversations.
Labrador City
We’ve tackled so many themes in every corner of the province over the years: food security, housing and homelessness, investing in rural development, and youth education and employment, to name a few. Our Regional Workshops explore ways of creating sustainable social and economic regions while identifying future opportunities for research, teaching, and outreach.
Total workshops:
33
4 | Regional Workshops
Total participants:
1,731
Since our very first Regional Workshop in 2005, the Harris Centre has organized 33 workshops all around the province.
Port Hope Simpson
St. Anthony
Where we’re going
L'Anse au Clair
Plum Point
New-Wes-Valley Springdale
Norris Point
Corner Brook Stephenville
These workshops are unique opportunities for faculty, students, and staff to gain a better understanding of the regional challenges facing the province.
Grand Falls-Windsor Marystown Gander
Port Rexton
Carbonear Conception Bay South St. John's Bauline East
Port Blandford
Milltown–Head of Bay d'Espoir
Renews
Placentia Harbour Breton Marystown
Seal Cove
Port aux Basques
Memorial participants:
636
For participants, our workshops are a chance to come together as a community and engage in strategic thinking about their region. So what’s next? As we continue to evolve, the Harris Centre is reviewing the model for Regional Workshops in order to make them as effective as possible for everyone involved. Looking forward, we plan to develop more sustained relationships and meaningful partnerships that continue beyond the workshops themselves.
Community participants:
1,095
Regional Workshops | 5
Vibrant democracy, informed citizens History Repeating: How do we make sure Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t end up in crisis again? This public forum explored how, as a modern democracy, we depend upon our institutions, such as government departments and agencies, non-governmental organizations, and also media outlets who influence governments and hold them accountable, to ensure that we avoid crisis.
100 attended in person
Memorial Presents public forums
Attendees 9,386
70
Events 82 MUN presenters
5,043 live
Synergy Sessions 200 watched via webcast
Attendees 3,920
132
Events
3,431 live
(numbers updated May 23, 2017)
The Harris Centre’s Mike Clair and Dr. Rob Greenwood with Dr. Alex Marland, Karen Oldford, David Vardy, and Shawn Skinner at the Bruneau Centre for Research and Innovation, St. John’s Campus, June 2016.
6 | Public Policy
4,343 online
489 online
The Harris Centre offers Memorial Presents public forums around the province on issues of important public policy in Newfoundland and Labrador. We also offer Synergy Sessions, providing an opportunity for a member of the public or Memorial University community to share their research on a pertinent public policy issue, followed by a discussion with attendees.
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Connecting opportunities with expertise 210 countries 6 continents
Redeveloped Yaffle open to everyone Yaffle was built to solve problems through collaboration. And now, it’s received a big upgrade to better connect community opportunities with university expertise. Since its initial launch in 2009, Yaffle has helped link community projects with Memorial researchers, enabled media to find experts to interview, and made it easier for graduate students to find supervisors. Re-launched in 2016, Yaffle has been redesigned with upgrades and expansions to make the site easier to use for everyone, especially members of the public. Everyone, from Memorial students, faculty, and staff, to community members and public partners, can now create a personal profile that shares their interests, expertise, and more. Personal profiles, projects and activities, and opportunities to collaborate – they’re all integrated in the upgraded Yaffle! Whether you’re looking for a map of projects by geographical locations, projects organized by theme, or a visual map of individuals’ collaborations with other users and projects, you can find it all. Another new feature on the horizon for Yaffle is Networks. The Networks function will allow groups to have a presence in Yaffle, just like people. This feature allows users to affiliate with Networks, as well affiliate their Projects and Opportunities with Networks if they choose. With Networks, groups can connect with their members, and members can connect with each other!
Yaffle.ca “Having diverse folks at the table can lead to better, more creative solutions to problems and opportunities. Experts can come from many places – the university, government, industry, community organizations, and right next door, in cities and towns across the province. Now, Yaffle can highlight who has the expertise you need – you don’t need to know an expert personally, just visit yaffle.ca!” - Jennifer Adams, lead, strategic development, Battery Facility and Yaffle
8 | Yaffle
13,000
users since new site went live
230,000 searches
Have an idea? We can help!
2,000+ projects
Yaffle opportunities come from people all around the province who want help with projects. Everyone is encouraged to go to Yaffle and click “Submit an opportunity.”
20,000
hits since new site went live
In Flat Bay, a self-governed Mi’kmaq community on the west coast of the island, the Flat Bay Band and Bay St. George Cultural Revival Committee have hosted one of the largest powwows in Atlantic Canada for the last 11 years, welcoming between 8,000 and 11,000 visitors from around the world for two days each summer. The success of the powwow led the band to create Project Sunset, a plan to develop the region’s tourism assets through a social enterprise. When Ivan White, tourism development and marketing officer for the project, wanted to find research collaborators for their destination marketing plan and tourism feasibility study, he turned to Yaffle.
Photo: Abadak Wilderness Adventures
“Yaffle is really easy to use and I had a response to the opportunity I posted within a week. I am now connected with people that I hope to foster partnerships with. I consider it a great resource, for community groups especially, to connect initiatives with researchers and specialists.” - Ivan White, Flat Bay
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1,000
report copies sent to
94
public libraries around the province
100,000
copies distributed in newspapers around the province
Provincial pulse Newfoundland and Labrador’s Vital Signs will examine sense of belonging While we hope it’s more fun than a trip to the doctor, Vital Signs, our partnership with the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, is basically an annual check-up on the state of life in Newfoundland and Labrador. Now in its fourth year, Vital Signs translates sometimes complicated statistical data into clear, accessible graphics. “It gives organizations, businesses, and members of the general public critical
10 | Vital Signs
information that can help them take advantage of opportunities and tackle challenges in our communities,” said Dr. Ainsley Hawthorn, Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. “We want to see Vital Signs stimulating conversations about the future of our province everywhere from kitchens to boardrooms to newsrooms.”
This report distributes easy-to-read statistics and stories on quality of life to 100,000 homes, businesses, libraries, and organizations around the province through our partnership with TC Media.
Each year, Vital Signs looks at specific aspects of life, from population, education, civic engagement, and the economy to wellness, gender, arts, and the environment. In 2016, Vital Signs shifted to a rural-urban focus, highlighting differences in areas such as mental health, housing, and population for those living in cities and their rural counterparts.
You can see all of the issues of Vital Signs at www.mun.ca/harriscentre/vitalsigns. We’ve also got a list of partnership opportunities for organizations who would like to get involved to support the project.
For the upcoming 2017 issue, sense of belonging, that oh-so-Newfoundland-andLabradorian aspect of life, will be featured.
Mayor Sheila Fitzgerald in her community of Roddickton-Bide Arm.
Joining forces Population projections inspire collaboration and forward-thinking in rural communities When the Harris Centre’s Population Project, led by Dr. Keith Storey, released population projections for Labrador and the Northern Peninsula last year, Mayor Sheila Fitzgerald of the community of Roddickton-Bide Arm says the numbers were a bit of a shock. “I don’t think I truly appreciated the age of our current population, or thought about the possible implications until I saw those results,” she said. “At this rate, without economic growth, our community will be stressed to find the support and services that the younger population often provides in a small town like ours.”
Still, Mayor Fitzgerald is optimistic about the future. Armed with information, forward planning, and collaboration, she believes that her community, and region, has what it takes to thrive. “We are a small town with strong community values,” she explains.
The Population Project is a team effort, drawing on expertise from across Memorial and the province, including the Harris Centre’s Regional Analytics Lab, RAnLab for short. Led by Dr. Alvin Simms and Jamie Ward, RAnLab transforms data into insight.
“If anything, the report has been an eye-opener. As a result, communities in our region are coming together and having more conversations about how to join forces – if one town benefits, we all do.”
Population Project | 11
Stimulating research
Since 2010 the Harris Centre – RBC Water Research and Outreach Fund has awarded >> $463,886 through 23 projects
Mobilizing results into community action The Harris Centre’s research funds exist to contribute to research that will inform public policy and help communities make decisions.
>> On everything from inventing
cheap, easy water filters for rural communities to testing water quality, province-wide.
Since 2011 the Harris Centre – MMSB Waste Management Applied Research Fund has awarded >> $348,602 through 26 projects >> On everything from new kinds
of composting to recycling old computers to helping the oil industry produce less waste.
Since 2005 the Harris Centre’s Applied Research Fund has awarded $1,155,802 in funding to 92 projects across all campuses, faculties, and departments.
Dr. Tahir Husain with
Safe, clean drinking
the Faculty of
water – something
Engineering believes
that all communities
that affordable water
around the province
filtration for rural
want to achieve for
communities is within
residents.
reach - he’s also using waste products from
Research on rural
industry to do it!
drinking water systems has taken Dr. Kelly Vodden, Associate Professor (Research) and Graduate Officer with the Environmental Policy Institute at the Grenfell Campus, coast to coast, from Port au Port East
Affordable solutions Dr. Husain’s most recent work focuses on removing arsenic from rural water supply systems using carbon filters designed in his lab. He says affordable technology is all about finding cheap, local materials. “Awareness is important, people should know what they’re drinking. But awareness is not enough – you have to provide an alternate solution. And solutions should be affordable. That’s why I’m calling it affordable technology.” He says they are using carbon generated from waste from the Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Mill as a simple barrier. Water passes through the barrier, and contaminants are removed before chlorination. “This is something I call a breakthrough in our work.” Dr. Husain says the Harris Centre-RBC Water Research and Outreach Fund has been instrumental in supporting his work.
12 | Research Funding
to Makkovik.
Fostering relationships Through studying concerns about the impact of recreational use of the watershed on drinking water supplies in Indian Bay, for instance, Dr. Vodden’s work has identified a number of shared challenges that small communities face around drinking water. Supported by the Harris Centre’s water fund, together with students, colleagues, and partners, she worked on an extensive study on rural drinking water in NL as well as several smaller related projects. Dr. Vodden’s work demonstrates the close, practical relationship between research and municipalities. “These projects have created the opportunity to strengthen relationships with partners, who I have worked with before and will continue to work with, such as Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador. Drinking water is a priority for municipalities, so drinking water research has allowed me to work with them on something that’s a high priority.”
Waste not These projects were funded by the Harris Centre – MMSB Waste Management Applied Research Fund.
What can the insides of trees tell us about pollution and waste in our environment? Dr. Merline Fonkwe, geoscientist with the Labrador Institute, studies A Marine Institute research scientist has ideas on
how trees in the region absorb contaminants.
how to upcycle salmon waste. Dr. Deepika Dave
Analyzing the cores of trees helps you see what’s
studies the discarded parts of salmon as a source of
happening in the ground, allowing researchers to
omega-3 oil.
evaluate contaminated sites.
Research Funding | 13
Diverse doctoral research showcased at MUNbuttoned MUNbuttoned is the Harris Centre’s Festival of Research. Purposefully always changing, no two MUNbuttoned events are alike!
At this event, which built on a partnership with the School of Graduate Studies and CBC Radio’s On the Go program, Memorial PhD students presented their diverse and compelling research in six minute whirlwind presentations. “I think every time you are presented with an opportunity to talk about or get feedback on your research, you should take it,” said Amanda Hancock, PhD student in Management with the Faculty of Business Administration.
Podcast explores “astonishing diversity” of rural life in Canada Q&A with Rural Routes podcast creator and host Bojan Fürst Bojan Fürst, the Harris Centre’s manager of knowledge mobilization, wanted to find a new way to share rural research and knowledge with a wide audience. In partnership with the Rural Policy Learning Commons and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation, Fürst created the podcast in 2016 and has covered everything from immigration and mining to food shopping, libraries, and rural writing. He sits down with the Harris Centre’s Zaren Healey White to talk about Rural Routes. ZHW: How did this podcast come to be? BF: Rural Routes came about after Ryan Gibson and I had post-conference drinks after a Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation conference in 2015. We’d heard about all this great research – we wanted other people to hear about it too! We settled on a podcast for several reasons. First of all, Internet access in rural areas can be tricky. So we wanted something where you could go to the public library and, while you’re borrowing books, you could hook up to the wi-fi and download some episodes. Another appeal of podcasts is that they can be used as a teaching method. Ryan teaches at the University of Guelph - he will assign an episode to his class, and have a class discussion on that topic.
BF: I think the most interesting part is realizing how diverse the issues affecting rural regions are. We tend to focus on urban regions because they have large populations, but in rural regions the issues are very complex. ZHW: You wanted to delve into what it means to live rurally in the 21st century. Have you figured that out, have you answered that question?
14 | MUNbuttoned + Rural Routes
an episode in his office turned studio.
BF: I don’t think there is a single answer to that question and that’s the fascinating part. If you live in a rural community very close to an urban region, your rural life may be quite different than if you live in a more remote community. ZHW: Who should listen to Rural Routes, who’s it for? BF: If you’re interested in rural issues, I would recommend that you listen. If you’re a student or researcher who is looking at community development, rural development, or things like health or food systems, there are episodes for you. We also have a lot of listeners who live in rural areas who love hearing how other places deal with certain issues. We have well over 3,000 downloads across the country now. We have people emailing us, suggesting content. Rural Routes has really, truly exceeded our expectations. Rural Routes is available online at www.ruralroutespodcasts.com. The podcast is also available for streaming or download through iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, and Stitcher, and is available free of charge to community and campus radio stations through the National Campus and Community Radio Association program exchange.
ZHW: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from interviewing people about rural life through the podcast?
Bojan Fürst producing
David Curran Award in Regional Development
All uncredited photos by Harris Centre staff including Zaren Healey White, Bojan FĂźrst, and Jennifer McVeigh, or submitted to the Harris Centre.
Petr Kocourek is a third-year economics and pure math student at Memorial and the winner of the 2016-2017 David Curran Award. From the Czech Republic and having already earned BA and MA degrees in philosophy, Mr. Kocourek is particularly interested in issues of regionalism, community development, and the quality of public services, particularly in rural NL. This scholarship was established by the Harris Centre, Newfoundland and Labrador Regional Economic Development Association, and Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador in recognition of David Curran, a passionate advocate and tireless champion of rural Newfoundland and Labrador.
Our values
The Harris Centre aspires to live up to the reputation of Dr. Leslie Harris, in whose honour the Centre was named. The following qualities guide the work done at the Harris Centre:
Integrity Independence Inclusivity Transparency Collaboration Practical Application
The Harris Centre believes in Memorial’s responsibility to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Our advisory board is made up of leaders from all across the province and Canada, including industry partners, governments, non-profit organizations, and educational institutions. The group meets twice yearly to advise the Harris Centre on a range of issues, including strategic themes, opportunities, regional policy and development capacity building, and funding. For a full list of the Harris Centre team, as well as members of the Advisory Board, please visit our website at www.mun.ca/harriscentre. To support the work of the Harris Centre, visit www.mun.ca/harriscentre/support.
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The Harris Centre Memorial University of Newfoundland 1st Floor, Spencer Hall St. John’s, NL A1C 5S7
709 864-3143 | harriscentre@mun.ca mun.ca/harriscentre | yafe.ca
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