Concordia University
ER-15: Sustainability Research Identification

A commitment towards sustainability is exemplified in various components of Concordia's Strategic Research Plan. A sample statement summarizing this focus is the following: 'Responsive to the needs of society, Concordia researchers are contributing dynamically to the many social, cultural, technological, health, environmental, and economic challenges and opportunities of contemporary life. Consequently, much of the research conducted at Concordia reflects the growing imperatives of adaptability and sustainability as experienced by people, communities, markets, industries, institutions, and countries around the world.' Additional statements related to sustainability in research can be found in the Strategic Research Plan, available here:http://vprgs.concordia.ca/planningandadministration/researchstrategicplan/download/strategic_research_plan.pdf

The beta version of research@Concordia was commissioned and overseen by the Office of Research and created by lab six and a half, an experimental multimedia group which draws on the skills of Concordia undergraduate students and recent graduates. Researchers were asked to distill their research into a single question and to select key words associated with their area of work. They were also asked to identify collaborators who could be linked to their research. All of this information served to populate the database/inventory.

research@Concordia is a project of Concordia's Office of Research and as of the fall 2012, was still in beta phase and did not include part-time faculty and research staff or the research collaborators from other institutions. The structure of research@Concordia is such that it may be considered an inventory of sustainability research as it provides easy access to the individuals involved in sustainability research the associated topics in a dynamic, visual manner, answering the question "Who does what?" A standard search using key words can be performed, or one of the following six topic 'clusters' can be accessed: human development and well-being, identity, expression and culture, human systems in a global world, enabling technologies and their basic foundations, advanced materials and nanotechnology, and energy, environment, and bioproducts. Once accessed, the subcategories of the clusters appears as words, their size proportional to the number of time the word was identified by a researcher as a key word. Additionally, research@Concordia makes links between various research collaborators and subjects. research@Concordia is one of the various means of accessing information pertaining to researchers and their work at Concordia. There are other collections as well through the Media Relations department (http://www.concordia.ca/now/media-relations/find-an-expert/search/). At the time of submission an institutional inventory had not been released but there were many innovative initiatives underway to paint a fuller picture of the research activities at Concordia University.