University of Windsor funding back on the rise

By Maxwell de Liberato

Researchers at the University of Windsor are pleased that research funding is increasing after decreasing  in the past few years based on a five year report published by the University.

 

In 2017 the university received $23 million in research funding.  The amount of federal funding has gone down by some margin, in 2013 it was nearly $17.5 million, but the number from 2017 comes in at just below $13 million.  The Tri-Council funding also went steadily down in those years mentioned, from $10.3 million in 2013 to $8.8 million in 2017. However, the provincial and international funding has gone up a combined $1.9 million.

 

“The budget in March 2018 provided significant funding to Universities across Canada, The University of Windsor has seen some of those investments as well,” said Heather Pratt, executive director of research and innovation at the University of Windsor.  “There’s been tremendous support from the federal government.”

 

Funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science to the university was plentiful in 2012, reaching upwards of $6 million.  However, since 2013 the number has shrunk to $1 million with numbers as low as $320,000 back in 2014. The number has only gone up since then but has not broken $1 million according to the most recent report by the university from 2017.

 

“It should be noted that the John R Evans Leaders fund is the only funding mechanism at the CFI that changed in that timeframe, all our other mechanisms to which UW can apply didn’t change significantly,” said spokesperson for CFI “Specifically, our major funding program, the Innovation Fund (or the Leading-Edge and New Initiative Fund as it was called back then) remained unchanged.”

 

The biggest research project that the university is currently involved in is a joint project with Western University, Trent University, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Ottawa.  The research is regarding real-time aquatic ecosystem network monitoring funded by the CFI at $17 million.

 

“It’s critical.  The funding from research, about 50 per cent of it generally is supporting students that are working with the faculty member that secures the research,” said Pratt.  “I think research is important to society as a whole because research really looks at how we’re doing things and tries to identify how we can make improvements, how we can do things better, how we can make people’s lives better,”

 

The University of Windsor received just under $25 million in 2018 in research funding.  Wilfrid Laurier University, a school with approximately a similar sized student body received $15.4 million.  However, a larger school like the University of Toronto receives $460 million in research funding.

 

“We’d always like to see more funding because of the impact it provides to our students,” said Pratt.  “So that’s something that’s a matter of continuous improvement on our part, trying to identify those new sources of funding, so we’re always looking to improve our funding.”