Funding, News and Announcements

TO:            Dalhousie University faculty

FROM:     Dr. Alice B. Aiken, Vice-President Research and Innovation

DATE:       Monday 27 April 2020       

RE:            Survey on Researcher Engagement with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In September 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, based around a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at mobilizing efforts to end poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring no one is left behind. It is the most comprehensive set of shared goals that the international community has ever set for itself, and will serve as the overarching roadmap for international cooperation over the coming decade. Such cooperation is now more important than ever, with the current COVID-19 pandemic presenting an opportunity for our global human family to act in solidarity and turn this crisis into an impetus to achieve the SDGs.

Dalhousie University strongly supports these efforts, and the five signature research clusters and two cross-cutting themes from our Strategic Direction for Research and Innovation are grounded in the SDGs. This is allowing us to leverage our greatest research strengths to partner with others globally, and to focus our efforts on solving some of the most complex global issues facing humanity. I am delighted to see that our outstanding efforts in these areas have just been recognized by Times Higher Education (THE) in its 2020 Impact Rankings exercise – the world’s only performance tables that assess universities against the SDGs. Dalhousie has been ranked among the world’s top 100 universities for its research, outreach and stewardship of the global goals.

Last year, my office initiated an annual survey to better understand how researchers at Dalhousie are engaging with the UN SDGs. We were pleased to receive over 100 completed responses. This year, we invite all faculty once again to participate in our SDG survey. We are interested in learning more about:

• what you are currently doing to engage with the SDGs (whether intentionally or not);
• how your research engages with the SDGs, and which of these goals have the closest alignment with your research; and
• with which networks/organizations you are currently engaged and sharing information.

The survey is available here. It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete, and will remain open until Monday 18 May 2020.

Your responses will be anonymous and will not be linked to you, unless you choose to provide your name. Participation is completely voluntary, and each question about your engagement with the SDGs is optional.

The results will help us determine the extent to which our researchers are contributing to these global goals, and help us to measure the effectiveness of Dalhousie’s Research and Innovation Strategic Direction. Thank you in advance for your valued participation.