NBSPRN: A Growing Community of Academics, Policy Makers and Community Leaders
Published online by St. Thomas University on July 9th 2014: http://w3.stu.ca/stu/research/news/news_view.aspx?id=152859
In April of 2013, the government of New Brunswick identified 5 priority areas in which they wanted policy and research expertise. Those areas included job creation, better healthcare, better education, focused leadership and citizen engagement. Many researchers across the province, including here at St. Thomas are conducting scholarly work on these topics already. Historically, there has been little infrastructure to translate academic scholarship to direct policy making. Andy Scott, retired MP and Senior Fellow in Social Policy at UNB, wanted to change that.
In 2010 Scott created an organisation, the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network (NBSPRN), whose aim it was to foster collaboration across sectors, institutions, and departments. The organization was made up of individual researchers, community organizers and policy makers who registered their areas of interest and expertise. In 2012 the organization came under the leadership of STU alumnus, Nick Scott and he has continued to lead NBSPRN in new directions.
One area in which NBSPRN is trying to build capacity is in constructing collaborative research teams for grant applications through SSHRC or other foundations. Scott explained, “If we want to build strong applications than we need to connect researchers with the knowledge users or with the co-creators and with potential matching funds or in-kind contributions to make a really strong application.”
