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Research in Colleges



 Why are colleges interested in research? Isn’t that a university thing? I received a couple of questions about this last year and I think it’s worth addressing.


Colleges are obviously different from universities in important ways, otherwise we wouldn’t have both. Colleges offer different programs and different approaches to teaching. Additionally, our students are different from university students as is our faculty expertise. These differences mean that our students and classrooms aren’t typically represented in traditional university research (and more specifically in SoTL). For example, how do students learn best? Well, that likely depends on the characteristics of the student and the content being taught. Although there is some overlap between colleges and universities in terms of courses and student characteristics, each is unique and this uniqueness needs to be represented in knowledge. Research creates new knowledge, but that knowledge is only accurate if it is based on a representative sample of the population (if it misses a bunch of people – e.g., college students – it is less representative and therefore less generalizable to the entire population of students).

College professors, unlike our university counterparts, don’t actually need to engage in research activities, so when we conduct research, we do so willingly (Piché et al., 2011). Our mandate remains focused on teaching, but more and more college professors are contributing to research efforts because they see the value in doing so (e.g., improving process and practices) (Fisher, 2010). We also have different research needs and goals, and university researchers are unlikely to help us reach those goals or address our unique needs. A point echoed by the authors of the responsible conduct of research in colleges manual. This manual accompanies a tutorial on the responsible conduct of research at colleges and nicely complements the TCPS2 modules which I suggested in my last article. Additionally, DC just launched a new Employee Development platform similar to DC Connect which contains two “courses” related to research and research ethics (log in using your banner ID and network credentials).

If there is anything I can do to support your research or if you have suggestions for me in my role as Research Coordinator, please reach out via email or pop into my "office hours" on Fridays from 12:30-1:30 on Whereby.

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