Did you feel it when you came to Guelph for the first time? The University of Guelph and Guelph-Wellington have a relationship that is special, and contributes to that abstract quality of “Guelphiness” that we often talk about.
When I came to Guelph, I quickly found out that our university enjoys amazing support from our community, whether it be through students and their parents, clients of the OVC, local businesses, or our local, provincial and national government representatives. Our shared love of our community, a vision of social progress, and our commitment to active community engagement form the basis for this long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship.
This week theCommunity Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI) at the University of Guelph is inviting us to think more deeply about the community we live in, with a focus on research and insight around our immediate neighborhood, the Guelph-Wellington region. This involves outreach by researchers from community organizations and municipal staff, as well as a number of research projects from UofG and OVC.
If you aren’t familiar with CESI, their name aptly sums up their mandate to operate as a strategic hub for engaged scholarship within the UofG and the broader immediate community. They work to leverage university resources for community benefit, to build relationships between faculty, community members and graduate students, and look for transformative opportunities.
It’s no surprise to learn the projects they are involved with span a broad range of issues in our local community – food security, poverty alleviation, inclusion and the environment among them.
Some of the projects on display at their March 1 event at Old Quebec Street will include work on farmland loss, food waste and the wellbeing of children. They will also include ones you may be very familiar with, such as OVC work connected to the outdoor cat population in Guelph – research that has explored the number of free roaming cats in the city and includes the Guelph Cat Population Taskforce survey.
This feral cat population work and the other projects on display at the CESI event this week are excellent examples of the impact we have on the local community as we put our expertise to work to improve life and help solve issues of mutual concern.
More broadly, they are indicative of how we make sure our university and the evidence-based research we do here impacts society at every level, from the local level to provincial, national and around the world. At a very basic level it is about building relationships with our neighbors and partners, putting our problem-solving abilities to work and looking for transformative opportunities that will make life better for our many communities.
There are some very practical ways we do this – it may be through designing effective and humane management strategies for outdoor cat populations, it may be by validating cow-side tests for ketosis in dairy cattle to help our farmers better manage their herds, or it may be by investigating tick populations across the province to better protect people and pets.
Of course, we also need to recognize our broader impacts – our role as influencers bringing our evidence-based expertise to impact policies in areas such as animal care, recommended codes of practice for farm animals or new approaches to tackle critical topical issues such as antimicrobial resistance.
We know our research capabilities and scientific expertise are extensive. By continuing to build strong local relationships, we’ll ensure the communities we live in, the industries we serve and government at every level look to us to provide novel solutions, develop human capacity, and prime the regional economic engine.
While the University of Guelph has an increasing reputation for impact at a national and global level, I believe we are particularly good at engaging in practical research that can inform the everyday life of our regional community members and partners. It is part cultural and part strategic – increasingly universities can not be successful alone – they need the support of their community as never before, and communities acknowledge the far-reaching benefits of having an institution of higher learning in their community.
If you have an
opportunity this Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, drop by Old Quebec Street and
learn more about the many Guelph Wellington projects underway that are making
life better for our local community. But I encourage you to also take some time
to consider how this type of community engagement and relationship building extends
beyond our local community and translates to broader impacts benefitting all
levels of society.