Research Support Fund

In 2025-2026  Bow Valley College allocated $25,596 RSF funding for: Management and administration of the institution's research enterprise

1. Institutional support for the completion of grant and award applications/research proposals and in support of the National Security Guidelines for Research Partnerships including:

1. salaries and benefits for staff who work on grant applications and research proposals (e.g., grant facilitators, award/prize facilitators, and administrative assistants)

2. Training of faculty and research personnel, including:

1. costs associated with attending research administration-related conferences for professional development.  Research admin staff attended and presented at the CARA national conference in 2025

Total amount of the RSF grant received by Bow ValleyCollege for the previous five years:

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Bow Valley College’s RSF Communication plan

In 2025, Bow Valley College (BVC) established a knowledge mobilization framework through collaboration among the Applied Research, Communication, and Marketing teams. This multi-disciplinary team is committed to supporting innovation by fostering a culture of collaboration, advancing the communication of research impact, and promoting knowledge mobilization best practices. The strategic plan is designed to engage BVC’s faculty, students, leadership internally; and inspire diverse external stakeholders – industry partners, government, policy makers, public and others. We are aiming at enhancing BVC’s reputation as one of Canada’s Top 50 Research Colleges by consistently communicating research impact.

‍Goal #1: Share our stories: optimize communication & dissemination of research results. Inspire and engage BVC research community, industry partners and public.

Strategic goals and key activities

Activities

• Post research stories on the BVC website
• Promote research stories throughout its life cycle
• Increase social media presence
• Leverage media channels
• Host research showcase events at the college
• Communicate knowledge mobilization best practices to BVC faculty

Indicators

• Number of stories and year-over-year increase
• Number of research showcase events

Goal #2: Build partnership/collaboration with key industries and community. Engage, recruit and retain partners throughout research. Implement a partnership engagement strategy, aligning with re-search goals.

Activities

• Showcase facilities for potential partners and community
• Engage external stakeholders in research strategic planning
• Support BVC faculty to widely disseminate results

Indicators

• Number of stakeholders engaged
• Number of new stakeholders reached out

Public Acknowledgment

Bow Valley College is committed to publicly acknowledging the support of the Research Support Fund and will communicate research results as per the above plan. The College will continue to support its research community and collaborate with partners to enhance impact.

2025-26 Research Support Fund Outcome Report

Bow Valley College (BVC) invested the 2025/26 Research Support Fund (RSF) allocation to enhance the management and administration of the research enterprise. The funding supported a Research Facilitator (RF) position which played a critical role in building and enhancing BVC’s research capacity, especially in BVC’s new health & health technology (H&HTech) strategic research pillar.  The RF played a pivotal role in building research capacity through:

• Coaching and mentoring twelve (12) faculties throughout the research development process (e.g., ideation, project development, grant proposal writing, budget preparation, EDI and knowledge mobilization planning).
• Making significant contributions to establishing BVC’s Simulation Research program by launching new research projects. This has been a key to achieving the NSERC’s Mobilize funding objective of launching four (4) new simulation research projects.    
• Supporting the development of multiple funding applications across federal and provincial funding programs, including SSHRC, Mitacs, College of LPNs and HCAs of Alberta (CLHA), and provincial funders. This resulted in increasing institutional capacity by completing external grant applications while reducing administrative burden on research leads.
• Serving as a valuable connector between the college and community, healthcare facilities and academic partners. The College’s leadership has signed an MOU with one of the largest health care facilities in Calgary for which the RF made contributions by proactively building research collaboration. Additionally, one new partnership was developed with a provincial continuing care association, enabling recruitment of fifteen (15) new industry and community applied research partners.
• Leading the development of an institutional research knowledge mobilization plan in collaboration with the research, marketing and communications teams and established a monitoring process. Implementation of the plan increased BVC’s applied research brand and reputation and inspired faculty, external partners and community.
• During the reporting period, fourteen (14) research stories were created and widely disseminated via internal and external communication channels, and ten conference presentations were made. One notable success story is Bow Valley College’s innovative research was showcased at SIM Expo. The innovative project, ViTAL, validated virtual reality as a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional high-fidelity simulation for nursing education.