Donald W. Compton, the first director of evaluation services at the National Home Office (Atlanta) of the American Cancer Society, tells the story of building the unit in conditions of high demand and a limited budget. Along the way, evaluation was brought to regional divisions and to local offices in part as a response to United Way and to his…

Undergraduate research in the sciences has been shown by numerous studies to enhance the educational experience. The Undergraduate Research Community (URC) founded in 2001 supports several initiatives that promote research in human sciences/family and consumer sciences including an online peer-reviewed journal specifically for undergraduate work,…

Applied research at Canada's colleges and institutes has expanded rapidly over the last five years. This report provides an overview of the current context and positions colleges and institutes as key players in Canada's innovation system. The report builds upon findings of previous research and reports on the results of the 2009-2010…

Research supervision development often focuses on improving the quality of researcher/student interactions and outcomes. Hence, academic development activity is usually oriented towards the development of individual capacities and practices. More recently, however, the focus has changed to the research enhancement needs of twenty-first century…

This article explores children's participation in research, from the perspectives of researchers who have conducted research with children. Researchers' reports, gained using an email interviewing method, suggest that children's participation rights are particularly compromised when the potential child participants are considered vulnerable and…

This first of two reports presents early findings from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Technical Assistance Centers (Comprehensive Centers), a federally funded program that provides technical assistance to states in connection with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The law authorizing the Comprehensive Centers, the…

The Laboratory Management Institute (LMI) at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) was an experiment designed to enhance the leadership and management skills of researchers and thereby enhance the overall quality of the academic research enterprise. The educational programs that resulted provide examples of how research administrators can…

Research has shown that women may perform actions such as leading, communicating, or working on a team differently than men perform them. For example, female leaders may have a more inclusive rather than authoritarian style. The American university is an institution designed by men for men. Women are increasingly represented as students and…

This article complicates how Canadian universities are pressured to capitalize on research and how these same pressures affect both the collaborative and community-based research within the academy by privileging one type of research and relationships within community over others. Through examining historical influences on Research Ethics Boards…

The authors tell about their heterogeneous 91 person research and evaluation unit at an operating foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota. They focus on evaluation for program improvement, one of several purposes of studies they work on. The three authors write from their different manager positions within the unit. Included are the context of the…

The paper provides an assessment of what we currently know about college, institute and polytechnic (collectively described here as colleges) applied research and positions them as key players in Canada's innovation system and in the federal science and technology strategy. The paper builds upon findings of previous research and reports on the…

Increasingly universities are becoming commercial enterprises and their core activities of teaching and research subject to business imperatives. This paper reviews the research costing methodologies of 17 Australian universities. Tension between Competition Law and Competitive Neutrality exists which could be resolved through improved costing and…

Concerns are held across the Group of Eight (Go8) that the standard terms sought by the Commonwealth when entering into research agreements with universities misunderstand the role and nature of universities; are unnecessarily onerous and impractical; often cause delay and uncertainty due to their complexity; and serve to stifle knowledge transfer…

Academic research is increasingly interdisciplinary, inter-institutional and international. In this context, creating and maintaining the balance in the nexus between research, teaching and learning and industry interaction is central to the operation and reputation of a university-level institute. In seeking sustainability, the perennial…

Universities have long been involved in knowledge transfer activities. Yet the last 30 years have seen major changes in the governance of university-industry interactions. Knowledge transfer has become a strategic issue: as a source of funding for university research and (rightly or wrongly) as a policy tool for economic development. Universities…