Research and Development Presentation today

As many of you know, Chris has been working with the media specialists through the winter and spring on Research and Development projects. Topics include Virtual Spaces, Mobile Apps and Websites, Virtual Spaces, and html 5 / CSS3. This morning they did a wonderful job presenting their findings to Peter Leclaire. Several interesting things came out of the discussion with Peter:

• There may be opportunities to link into external research funding opportunities. The College has hired a full-time grant researcher / proposal writer to assist in securing grant funding.

• Peter asked specifically about building capacity for this type of work so we continue to move it forward. We all know that it's very difficult to focus when we're doing it "off the side of our desks". This certainly means we will need to continue to look for opportunities to apply what we've learned in our College wide projects as well as look externally for funding opportunities. Perhaps more importantly we also need to integrate the challenge of building capacity into our EET plans for next year and beyond. We talked about trying to find a balance between the work we need to do to support instructors and programs but still find time to be innovative.
  

• The presentation today put us in a very good position to apply for internal funds that have been put aside for innovation. This is very exciting, and may be one giant step towards building capacity within EET.
  

• We will also be looking at opportunities to collaborate with other institutions and / or with industry. Again, this could lead to some very exciting opportunities.
  

Kudos to this group of dedicated EET staff for their commitment to this very important project - and for their very professional presentation this morning.