Impact, Charities and Staff Skills at ARMA
Around 350 people attended hot and sunny Southampton DeVere Grand Harbour Hotel for the annual conference of the association of research managers and administrators (ARMA).
Bill Wakeham, (Southampton) spoke about the challenges facing university research – what a university needs and expects from its professional services in being able to deliver complex research. He raised the idea of professional project management staff external to the researchers but also talked about the disparity of reward and career progression structures when compared with academics, and the lack of incentives for academics to move “the other way” to work in research management.
Impact became a recurring theme, with discussions around the new REF having a more explicit account of impact including economic, social, cultural and quality of life benefits. Time lags of the evidence of impact were recognised, and engagement activities were thought to fall either with impact or the “research environment” measure.
Of relevance to our BCE CPD project was work at Sheffield University, driven by the Roberts agenda for developing post doctoral researchers in engagement and collaboration with industry. Skills provided through a development programme included networking and addressing industry challenges. Researcher development was becoming more embedded into the departmental culture and non academic career mentoring was used through an industrial employment advisory board. Other skills covered included pubic communication and working as science ambassadors.
Other parallel sessions included presentations about electronic research support systems, and how to measure and assess their success. Examples included more accurate costing, integrating multiple data sources (for example in collating information for the RAE), more flexible management reporting and greater visibility.
Phil Clare (Oxford, UNICO) highlighted the challenges faced by institutions with the removal of the presumption that educational activity is charitable. This impacts on how universities manage their collaborative/contract research and consultancy activity to separate their “primary purpose” from private benefit (e.g. to business). The charity commission has since published new guidance on this:
http://http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/supportingcharities/higherres.asp
Oisin MacNamara (AURIL, Northumbria) spoke about integrating research and innovation, asking “Is there a gap between policy and implementation, and can our information systems cope?” His comments resonate with the Embedding BCE through business process improvement project, in particular when he raised the question of whether support for research knowledge transfer and employer engagement is coherent and integrated. He also noted that most information systems were driven by the major needs of university – teaching and research - and also asked can we measure metrics in real time for social and economic impact? Staff development was raised again as a key issue, the BCE Awareness and Education project will be interested to hear that understanding the breadth of “knowledge transfer” and how it fits together was a key theme.
Neil Jacobs from JISC’s Information Environment programme talked about research dissemination, use and exploitation, and JISC’s work in this area. Topics included digital repositories and archives, open access, and an overview of the Business and Community Engagement programme, of which research knowledge transfer is one part.
Neil Bradshaw (Bristol) gave an interesting overview of good practice in knowledge exchange, highlighting the importance of people as the best way to exchange knowledge. In answer to the last question, he gave a comprehensive coverage of the breadth of knowledge exchange, putting into context spin out companies as quite low down on the list in comparison with the impact of the graduate, publications, collaborative research, seminars, performance and collection, and policy engagement. He gave the example of US companies having an academic on the board of many technology companies as a sounding board and described how knowledge exchange revolves around people as carriers, co-creators, initiators, and communicators of embodied knowledge.
Following a detailed background of key reports and studies, he asked the question: what does the user want? His answers included skilled people, access to new thinking and innovation, authentication and verification. For the future, he highlighted strategic relationships, people mobility and exchange and open innovation as the way forward.