Community Report: Research in Action 2015

UNIVERSITY WITHIN COMMUNITY:
RESEARCH IN ACTION

A MESSAGE
from the ASSOCIATE DEAN, RESEARCH
Dr. Yoshitaka (Yoshi) Iwasaki

This is a very exciting time for the Faculty of Extension: Our scholars continue to be involved
in a number of innovative, community-based research projects, working together with their partners from
provincial and municipal governments, non-profit agencies, Aboriginal and immigrant communities, school
boards, health systems, and more.
Extension’s scholars contextualize the research process within the community (rather than on the community)
to generate research outcomes directly relevant and meaningful to the community. Mutually-respectful
relationship building and collaboration between community and university partners is a hallmark of
Extension’s research.
Our research is always in action as we mobilize for positive changes at personal, social, and system levels.
This research builds capacities for people and communities while helping to develop evidence-based
approaches to improving policy and practice in our community.
The mission of the Faculty of Extension is to provide leadership in social and individual betterment through
community-university engagement in learning, discovery, and citizenship. Importantly, action research plays
a significant role in all our learning (from each other), discovery (of new knowledge), and citizenship (to serve
our community), by integrating our university within our community.
The theme for this year’s report is “Inspiring Lives.” As shown in each of the six stories featured in this
report, our scholars’ and partners’ research provides inspiration: These stories are about inspiration for and
within Métis communities, low-income families, high-risk youth, senior citizens, social service workers, and
First Nations children. Not only do we reveal a fuller, more holistic picture of situations and issues faced by
our communities, but we also build capacities of people and communities to address significant community
issues. This is accomplished by making connections, opening space for voices, and mobilizing research to have
an impact through engaging and building relationships with our communities.
One major transformation in the Faculty of Extension involves the consolidation of Extension’s research units
into the “Research Neighbourhood” on the second floor of Enterprise Square. This consolidated space houses
all of Extension’s research centres and units:
• Centre for Public Involvement (CPI)
• City-Region Studies Centre (CRSC)
• Community-University Partnerships for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families (CUP)
• Evaluation and Research Services (ERS)
• First Nations Children’s Action Research and Education Services (FNCARES)
Operationally, we have started to implement Research Support Services (RSS) to provide Faculty-wide support
for research development, partnership building, and community engagement through effective management
and sustainable support for all stages and levels of Extension’s research initiatives (both new and ongoing).
Based on the principles of collaboration and resource sharing, the RSS within Research Neighbourhood is
structured to facilitate greater success for the research enterprise.
Extension’s community-based research is well positioned to significantly contribute to addressing major
community issues through partnerships with key stakeholders. Both the Government of Alberta and the City
of Edmonton have declared ending poverty as a top priority, and they eagerly rely on expertise in communitybased
research. The announcement of the new Social Innovation Endowment Fund for social sciences and
humanities research by the Government of Alberta is exemplary of the importance of applied action research
to more effectively address major community issues such as poverty, homelessness, early child development,
and Aboriginal and immigrant issues.
I am very proud to know that our researchers and research centres in the Faculty of Extension are
exceptionally qualified to make a significant contribution to these innovative initiatives for the betterment of
our people and communities!
2

THE START OF A
BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP

The people of the Buffalo Lake and Kikino
Métis Settlements are incredibly unique
populations with equally unique histories
and cultures. The Faculty of Extension is the
only post-secondary Faculty in Canada with
a primary research mandate of community
engagement. The relationship between the
two is anything but traditional—but then,
that’s the whole point.
Fay Fletcher approached the Buffalo Lake
Métis Settlement (BLMS) in 2010 to develop
a life-skills program for youth and children to
grow in capacity to resist negative behaviour
(e.g., smoking, drinking, or bullying). At that
time, she had little knowledge of Métis culture.
She did, however, have support from Extension
and Alberta Health Services, which lent a rare
advantage: She could start from scratch.
“We went into this project thinking we should
engage based on our knowledge of First
Nations people,” says Fay. “But we quickly
found that the Métis are very distinct from
other Aboriginal peoples, so we had to build
our own capacity to find culturally-appropriate
solutions. We had to be very open to ideas and
to engage in a lot of dialogue.”
Through these conversations, her research
team found a very strong youth component
in the community, so they focused efforts on
a program built and conducted for youth, by
youth. With constant community consultation,
Fay’s team put together the Life Skills Journey
summer day camp, a play-based program
designed to enhance developmental strengths
for seven- to ten-year-olds. BLMS youth were
recruited and trained as camp facilitators and
peer mentors.
Fay Fletcher takes engagement
with Albertan Métis communities
to the next level
Fay learned much from the community; six
years ago, for instance, she was strongly
discouraged from using social media in her
community-based research. Experts in BLMS,
however, identified those media among the
most effective ways to engage with the youth.
“A member of our research team is very techsavvy,”
says Fay. “She set up a website, a
Facebook profile, and a Twitter account, and
then pushed out messages constantly. We got
permission to use photos from participants,
and we got a lot of friends and followers by
posting those visuals.”
Over summer 2013, day camps were piloted
at Buffalo Lake and Kikino. Fifty-six children
took part in ten days of activities, learning in
such modules as “anger,” “spirituality,” and
“media messages.” Personal growth among
participants (evaluated using the validated
Resiliency Framework) was recorded in
strengths such as acceptance, spirituality,
and reflective thinking, with an overall
reduction in at-risk behaviours. The research
team is optimistic to see these trends grow,
particularly if they are able to extend their
current three years of funding to five. The data
will be enriched further as the team begins
delivering the program to 11- through 14-year
olds in future years.
More, says Fay, “we can see growing
connections between the community and the
youth. It’s changing the whole dynamic!” The
community, in turn, has shown an interest in
the research and a commitment to its success.
“The communities we now work with are as
invested in our team’s success and well-being
as we are in theirs,” says Fay. She professes
that the project has developed from one
of engagement into an enduring research
relationship.
“Engagement, I think, is at its best when it
becomes a relationship; with a relationship
comes accountability to one another. And it’s
encouraging to know that it’s possible for a
university to accomplish this. After all, we
are not distinct from the community. We are
one and the same. And we are stronger for
realizing this.”
4

COMMUNICATION:
A SOCIAL LIFE-SAVER

Terrance Saddleback had “a disorder that left
him with the mind and impulse control of a
child” and “suffered from psychotic episodes
accompanied by violent rages,” according to
a statement by Valerie Wolski’s husband.
The same statement contends that many
community service organizations knew of
Saddleback’s condition long before he violently
murdered Ms. Wolski in 2011.
Breakdowns in communication happen all
the time. Sometimes they’re innocuous.
Sometimes, in the cases of Ms. Wolski and
other social care service workers, they are
unthinkably tragic.
“The notion of social work can conjure up
thoughts of giving personalities, dedicated
helpers, and families brought together through
caring,” says Extension’s Tom Barker. “As one
social worker put it, the image is all ‘hug-amuffin.’
But the reality sometimes means
working alone in rural areas, home visits with
dangerous people, or uniting families where
one partner is under a restraining order due to
violent behaviour.”
Accuracy and effectiveness of communication
by front-line social service workers and the
agencies that represent them is the reason
Tom’s expertise in community-based research
and technical communication helped him
co-found the Health and Safety for Child and
Families Services (HSCFS) project.
With a goal to make the lives of these workers
safer by identifying physical, chemical,
biological, environmental, and mental health
hazards, the HSCFS partnership brings
together representatives from the Faculty of
Extension, the Alberta Association of Services
to Children and Families, and the province’s
Ministry of Human Services to galvanize safety
management practices.
Lack of communication can be
fatally dangerous for social
service workers, says Tom Barker
“We’re operating on a knowledge-to-action
paradigm,” explains Tom, “and we have a lot
of knowledge available. Once we’ve collected
this data from our partners, we can do a multivariant,
complex analysis of hazards these
workers face and provide useful, actionable
statistics back to those agencies.”
This knowledge, contends Tom, can inform
policies on reporting of incidents and recording
of data, as well as safety frameworks,
employee training, and education. “It’s all
communication,” he says, “and it underlies
everything in the health and safety arena.”
HSCFS is also setting up a community of
practice for social services workers to speak
with one another over a LISTSERV and to
share stories and information. Breaking down
communication barriers is key, since, as Tom
points out, “if you want to get information
from people about safety issues, you can’t just
expect them to respond to a survey. They have
to want to share the information.”
But how does one communicate best? “We need
buy-in from all members of the community,
even just to know which questions to ask,”
says Tom. “A researcher like me would need 20
years of work in the field to get the knowledge
you can marshall from professionals with the
expertise to inform this research.”
The project began in September 2013 and was
intended to last a year; now that pilot studies
have begun in Edmonton (and with seven other
sectors in Alberta eagerly awaiting the results),
the project has become ongoing.
“We hope to have data at the end of 2014,
after which we can do a pre- and post-test with
participating agencies to determine whether the
knowledge captured leads to an increase in the
number of incidents reported,” says Tom.
When a more vivid picture of social service work
is painted by this project, however, one wonders
if prospective workers might be scared away
from pursuing this career.
Absolutely not, says Tom.
“The construction industry, for example, is very
hazardous, but people still enter it. If you know
about the potential hazards in your industry and
how to report when incidents happen, it’s a far
better-managed industry, and everyone in that
industry is safer than before.”
6

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

“We work with young people anywhere from 15
to 24 years old. And they’re very disengaged.
Many used to be homeless and have no parental
support. Some have spent time in prison.
They’re often disconnected from mainstream
Canadian society. So researchers call them
marginalized, or at-risk, or high-risk youth, but
the youth themselves don’t like any of those
terms.”
What do they prefer?
“People.”
Yoshi Iwasaki delivers that last word with a
smirk. “We are all people,” he explains, “And we
all deserve to be engaged with our communities
and provided with meaningful opportunities.”
Yoshi was just beginning his new job at
Extension (then as Director of Extension’s
Community-University Partnership for the
Study of Children, Youth, and Families) when
he got involved in discussions among local
agencies supporting youth development; these
organizations lacked a coordinated context with
which to engage those youth. Most, says Yoshi,
operate on a “talk-down” basis, without fully
integrating the voice of youth.
“Have we tried listening to them?”
Yoshi Iwasaki posits
about disengaged youth
“We put together a team to talk about what a
framework might look like, and looking around
the table, the first thing I asked was ‘Okay,
where are the youth?’”
A valid point. Yoshi’s experience in engaging
and mobilizing marginalized population groups
informed an opinion that this framework (and
the research needed for the new Youth4YEG
initiative to build it) had to be youth-driven (“we
work with youth, not on youth,” Yoshi stresses).
“We needed to create a home-grown framework
for youth engagement, basically from scratch,”
says Yoshi. Youth4YEG was able to recruit a
number of marginalized youth leaders who
were recommended by partner agencies to
attend a series of weekday evening discussions
to exchange stories and to identify principles
and processes that would make up a youth
engagement framework.
Says Yoshi: “We get a dozen or so young people
into the room, we lay down some ground rules,
then we order pizza and do activities like talking
circles.”
Other agencies, he points out, do similar
activities, but do not systematically collect data.
“We have partnerships with the city
government and the provincial government, as
well as Edmonton’s youth agencies, and they’re
very excited about what we’re doing, since
they haven’t until now had access to research
expertise and resources,” says Yoshi.
The Youth4YEG team has, at the time of
writing, conducted four three-hour youth
engagement sessions since they began in
October 2012; each time, researchers ask very
strategic questions, such as “tell us one positive
thing that’s happened to you” or “what are
the most important things for getting you
engaged?”
The youth leaders (as co-investigators) have
already developed an 13-page framework that
is being tested using inductive research and
constant feedback. Once testing is complete,
Yoshi is confident that this youth-created
framework (the first of its kind) will be effective
in positively engaging youth locally, nationally,
and internationally.
“The framework is home-grown but can be
applied cross-culturally when you incorporate
local and cultural uniqueness to make it
effective in an action plan,” says Yoshi. “It is
a template, not a prescription. It’s important
that every agency develop its own plan
when empowering youth. And engagement
is essential for every youth, regardless of
nationality or cultural background.”
So how does a young person know if he or she
is “engaged?”
Says Yoshi: “They seem to understand
intrinsically which activities are good and which
are bad. They know, for example, that drug
abuse and violence are bad. So engagement,
for them, means participating in activities they
consider ‘good’ and constructive, and if they
choose to do those ‘positive’ things on their
own terms, they’re much more likely to become
healthy, contributing members of society.
Relationship-building with youth through youth
leadership is very important to this process.”
8

THE GOLDEN CENTRE

“They’re places for someone like Ernie,” says
Kyle Whitfield. “He’s 82. Everyday since his wife
died, he walks to the centre for breakfast and a
chat with friends. Then, he says, he can carry on
with his day.”
Over the past year, Kyle’s conversations with
patrons of seniors’ centres in Alberta have
unearthed a trove of similar tales of reduced
mobility, social isolation, and grief over the loss
of loved ones, and, as her research partner Jason
Daniels says, “seniors’ centres are the reason a
lot of people get out of bed in the morning.”
Since springing up sporadically in the 1970s,
such centres have provided services, activities,
and places for conversation, and they have
become so successful that the Alberta
Association of Seniors’ Centres (AASC) now lists
over 400 centres in their 2014 directory.
It’s difficult to think of a more ideal system:
the centres are self-sustaining, typically
administered by their members, and, according
to Roger Laing, president of AASC, “vital to the
lives of seniors throughout Alberta.”
Why, then, did Health Minister Fred Horne
announce in January 2013 that the provincial
government would grant $70,800 for research
into the current state of our seniors’ centres?
The question encompasses so many factors
and nuances it could hardly be answered over
afternoon tea or a game of cards.
Currently, history’s most-populous generation is
entering its autumn years, and seniors’ centres
do not have the capacity to handle them.
That’s assuming, of course, the Boomers will
choose to join these centres.
Extension duo tasked with
painting a complex portrait of
Albertan Seniors’ Centres
Complicating things, says Jason (a member of
Extension’s Evaluation and Research Services
and the project’s “numbers guy”), is increasing
diversity in clientele populations, which makes it
difficult to ensure everyone’s needs are met.
For that matter, the definition of seniors’
centres is as elusive as that of a senior (says
Kyle, they’re terms like “teenager” that assume
a 13-year-old is the same as a 19-year-old).
Urban centres differ from rural centres;
governance structures differ from town to town.
And because services differ so greatly,
it’s hard to say exactly what constitutes a
seniors’ centre.
The freeform nature of the centres spells
uncertainty in the coming twilight of the
Boomers, and Roger Laing knows it. It was
his idea to approach Kyle, whose previous
research into Alberta’s aging populations begat
a strong working relationship with AASC.
Their conversation led to a research proposal,
which, when presented to the Ministry of
Health, germinated this study with Kyle as lead
researcher and Jason as research designer.
“It’s a complex issue, so we chose a mixedmethod
approach,” Jason explains. “We
surveyed seniors and soon-to-be-seniors about
the centres. We surveyed the directors to find
out what services they provided and what their
needs are. And we did site visits and focus
groups at eight different centres,” (where, says
Kyle, Jason suspiciously showed up just in time
for cinnamon buns).
At the time of writing, the data has been
collected. Jason is making graphs and tables and
Kyle is finishing up a literature review. Both are
noticeably engrossed in the process.
“My naïve understanding of seniors’ centres at
the outset has broadened considerably,” says
Jason. “I saw them originally as drop-in social
centres, but they’re also places of learning
and volunteering and helping one another. The
wealth of expertise in every person we spoke
with was incredible.”
Says Kyle: “There’s a lot of laughter and
socializing [at the centres]. And there’s plenty
of evidence that people who laugh and have
more personal connections have better overall
health. If we expect to engage with seniors
and to benefit from their knowledge and
contributions, we need a more complete picture
of their needs. Which is what we’re about to
accomplish.”
10

LIKE KIDS IN A DATA STORE

Every research project is an investment. Very
few, however, have this many investors.
Since 2006, at the beginning of a multi-year
longitudinal study of low-income families in
Edmonton, the number of stakeholders in the
Fulfilling Alberta’s Commitment (FACt) project
has grown to include governments, NGOs,
funders, academics, students, and the research
participants themselves. Thousands of hours
and millions of dollars will soon result in actions
to improve these families’ lives.
“At least we hope so,” says Maria Mayan.
A founding member of Families First Edmonton
(FFE), now in its twelfth year, Maria (along with
her colleague Laurie Schnirer) is overseeing
what grew from a group of concerned citizens
into a sprawling, ambitious research project
with a “blow-your-mind” database comprising
six years of periodic interviews with low-income
families. It’s a fantasy come true for any applied
research protagonist. But time is of the essence.
“We’re currently working on interpreting the
data,” says Maria. “Our partner agencies find
meaning and context in our results, and we take
our directional cues from them.”
The next step, she says, is to offer to Alberta
Human Services evidence of how some lowincome
families eventually achieve economic
self-sufficiency. Or of what impact child care
subsidies have on families’ economic outcomes.
Or of what happens to families who move
residences frequently. All are vital questions
that hinge on future funding.
Salvation for everyone’s investment, it seems,
may be in the hands of community-minded
graduate students, recruited and coordinated by
FACt’s Knowledge Broker, Nyla de Los Santos.
“We put a blurb about the project on a grad
student LISTSERV,” says Nyla, “and immediately
started getting a lot of applications.
Hope for low-income families is in
the FACt grad student brain-bank
But we could only accommodate ten students.
I’m very satisfied that we’ve chosen well.”
The students, says Nyla, bring diverse
backgrounds in their interests and in their
personal stakes in the research.
“These people are potentially going to do this
sort of work in their chosen field. Here, they
get hands-on experience in community-based
research, a complete data set covering many
areas of interest and discipline, and a chance to
see their work affect real people,” she says.
The students agree.
“FACt is having a larger impact than I’d
imagined,” says Katie MacDonald, a doctoral
student in Sociology. “I see the project
embracing the complexity of experiences and
struggles that families living on low incomes
face.”
The work stimulates some of her teammates
on a more personal level: “I’ve learned
about the struggles my parents may have
gone through years ago as first generation
Canadian immigrants,” says Sonya Sehgal,
Masters’ student in Educational Psychology.
“I want to give back by helping out immigrant
communities through my work.”
More than this, the students are making
personal connections with other stakeholders;
Nyla and Maria frequently ask them to attend
and present at meetings of the entire FACt
team, including community members external
to the University.
“I’m learning that a lot of people genuinely care
about reducing income disparity,” says Lesley
Pullishy, who is using FACt data for her Masters’
thesis in Nursing. “After working with others on
FACt, I feel inspired by the good work going on
locally.”
Is it worth all the effort? Yes, says Maria (albeit
hesitantly).
“I don’t think we have accomplished what we
set out to do,” she says. “We can fill up five
years answering important questions with this
data set. We said years ago ‘if our partnership
of people, after 12 years, with all this expertise,
after everything we’ve been through, CAN’T
change policy or practice, we might as well....”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
12

RESEARCH IN ACTION

The interview that informed this feature
took place in a Starbucks near Extension’s
headquarters, mainly because Cindy Blackstock,
Director of the First Nations Children’s Action
Research and Education Service (FNCARES)
doesn’t have an office in Edmonton, and
appropriately so: She believes community-based
work means that her office needs to be in the
community, where people naturally gather.
Cindy is forever in motion, and she’s currently
testifying to the Canadian Human Rights
Tribunal, calling the federal government to task
over inequitable conditions for Canada’s First
Nations children and youth. She’s in Edmonton
today to take part in a panel discussion
alongside director Alanis Obomsawin, whose
film “Hi Ho Mistahey!” will be screened for the
first time in Alberta.
The film documents the life of Shannen
Koostachin, a young woman from the
Attawapiskat First Nation of Ontario, whose
activism for First Nations education is
emblematic of the action-oriented philosophy
at the core of FNCARES.
Shannen was educated in portable trailers that
stood in for her condemned school. The shoddy
conditions were not atypical to First Nations
schools, which even today deal with pest
infestations, lack of heating or plumbing, and
no libraries or computer labs. Shannen wrote
letters to politicians and encouraged others
to do so. She spoke at events and stood on
Parliament Hill to testify to the lack of funding
for these schools—all this before she died in a
traffic accident hundreds of miles from home,
where she travelled to attend a proper
high school.
“This is an urgent inequality,” explains Cindy.
“Children only get one childhood, and they’re
growing up right now. This urgency hasn’t
gripped our politicians, so I’ve had to move
beyond academics to evidence-based activism.
FNCARES debuts as a different kind
of research centre to make positive
change for First Nations children
When governments fail to address significant
public policy issues despite evidence of the
harm and available solutions, then it is the
responsibility of the academic community to
work with those affected to advance positive
change.”
Many of the challenges facing First Nations
children could be addressed with evidencebased
solutions, says Cindy. She offers an
example:
“In the United States, the federal government
found that 30 per cent of children went into
foster care because of housing instability.
The government provided $15 million to social
workers to spend up to a value of $14,000 per
family. So those workers might have chosen
to pay a family’s first and last month’s rent,
renovated the bathroom for a child with a
disability, or got rid of a mold contamination.
That investment saved 7500 kids from going
into foster care and saved $131 million in taxes
in the process. These are the sorts of practical
solutions we should search for.”
To mobilize information, FNCARES will access
a multi-disciplinary network of 21 leading
researchers from across Canada, the US, and
Australia.
Says Cindy: “I’ve been blessed to work with
fantastic researchers, and I am willing to raise
the ‘help’ flag quickly. I am fortunate to have a
circle of traditional knowledge holders, as well
as gifted academics across disciplines who can
guide our work for children and families.”
The first meeting of FNCARES researchers
will take place in 2014, after the case against
the federal government concludes. Cindy is
optimistic this will provide momentum to spur
conversation and action among partners.
“There’s an Elder’s teaching that says ‘a lot of
people know the road and few people walk it.’
Action research is about walking the road,” says
Cindy. “I see research as being in service of the
community. And if you see it that way, you have
to be part of the change process. You ARE the
change process.”
14

FACULty of Extension
2013-2014:
PROFESSORIATE:
Marco Adria, PhD
Professor
Academic Director, Centre for Public
Involvement
Walter Archer, PhD
Professor Emeritus
Academic Director, Teaching and Learning
Thomas Barker, PhD
Professor
Mary Beckie, PhD
Associate Professor
Cindy Blackstock, PhD
Associate Professor
Executive Director, First Nations Child and
Family Caring Society
Katy Campbell, PhD
Professor
Dean, Faculty of Extension
Sherry Ann Chapman, PhD
Assistant Professor
Ann Curry, PhD
Professor
Fay Fletcher, PhD
Associate Professor
Academic Director, Aboriginal Health Promotion
Citation, Community Engagement Studies
Lois Gander, Q.C., LL. M.
Professor
Rebecca Gokiert, PhD
Assistant Professor
Gordon Gow, PhD
Associate Professor
Academic Director, Communications &
Technology Graduate Program
Martin Guardado, PhD
Associate Professor
Academic Director, English Language Program
Yoshitaka (Yoshi) Iwasaki, PhD
Professor
Associate Dean, Research
Maria Mayan, PhD
Associate Professor
Laurie Schnirer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Interim Director, Community-University
Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth,
and Families (CUP)
Rob Shields, PhD
Professor
Henry Marshall Tory Research Chair
Academic Director, City-Region Studies Centre
Billy Strean, PhD
Professor
Kristof Van Assche, PhD
Associate Professor
Stanley Varnhagen, PhD
Faculty Service Officer IV
Academic Director, Evaluation and Research
Services
Kyle Whitfield, PhD
Associate Professor

ADJUNCT PROFESSORS:
Jeff Bisanz, PhD
Chair, Psychology, University of Alberta
Community-University Partnership for the
Study of Children, Youth, and Families
Martin Garber-Conrad, CEO
Edmonton Community Foundation
Community-University Partnership for the
Study of Children, Youth, and Families
Monica Gruezmacher Rosas, PhD
Environmental Resource Management Program
Susan Lynch, PhD
Research Project Director
Early Child Development Mapping Project
Community-University Partnership for the
Study of Children, Youth, and Families
Helen Madill, PhD
Professor Emerita
Office of the Dean
Patricia Makokis, PhD
Community Engagement Studies
Debra Pozega Osburn, PhD
Vice President, University Relations
University of Alberta
Communications & Technology
Graduate Program
Jorge Sousa, PhD
Associate Professor, Educational Policy Studies
University of Alberta
Jane Springett, PhD
Director, Centre for Health Promotions Studies
School of Public Health, University of Alberta
Community-University Partnership for the
Study of Children, Youth, and Families
Mark Wolfe, PhD
Communications and Technology
Graduate Program
STATISTICS:
2012-2013 2013-2014*
Year-Over-Year
Comparison
Research Grants $1,270,783 $1,526,617 20%
Professoriate 19 20 5%
Program Areas Offered
(credentials, designations, etc)
42 46 10%
Courses Offered 327 300 -8%
Course Sections Offered 851 863 1%
Individual Learners 7,627 7,518 -1%
International Students 1,099 1,262 15%
*Please note: this data represents the time period April 1, 2013 to March 18, 2014 (i.e. not the full fiscal year)
16

Vision:
To be an exemplary centre for the scholarship and practice
of community-university engagement.
Mission:
To provide leadership for social and individual betterment
through community–university collaborations in learning,
discovery and citizenship.
Values:
The Faculty of Extension’s values encompass academic rigor,
accessibility, accountability, collaboration, cooperation,
equity, excellence, relevance, respect, responsiveness,
environmental sustainability, and social justice.

The 15th Annual
Engagement Scholarship Consortium
Conference
Engaging for Change:
Changing for Engagement
hosted by the
University of Alberta
in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
October 5 - 8, 2014
www.escc2014.com
The University of Alberta invites engaged scholars throughout the world
to the 15th annual Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference, to
be held in Edmonton, Canada with pre-conference days on
October 5 & 6 and full conference on October 7 & 8.
Our conference theme is Engaging for Change: Changing for
Engagement and will challenge scholars, students, and community
partners to discuss international advances in the scholarship of
engagement.
engagementscholarship.org/conference

“INSPIRING LIVES”
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
FACULTY OF EXTENSION
Enterprise Square
10230 Jasper Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5J 4P6
2008130