Funding, News and Announcements

TO:  Dalhousie University faculty

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

DATE:  Monday 26 April 2021       

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 is serving as this decade’s overarching roadmap for international cooperation. Such cooperation is now more important than ever, with the COVID-19 pandemic having presented 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. Our work in this area was profiled this month by Universities Canada in its report on “Canadian Universities Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals”, and just last week, we learned that Dalhousie has again been ranked by Times Higher Education (THE) as being among the world’s top 200 institutions making impact in their communities and globally.

Since 2019, my office has conducted an annual survey to better understand how researchers at Dalhousie are engaging with the UN SDGs. Last year, we were pleased to receive over 200 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 17 May 2021.

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.