Category: Uncategorized

Amy Lemay and Andrew Kretz presented papers at the 2012 Association for Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Annual Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA). In one of the papers, The Uptake of University Research in Public Policy: The View of “Users” in a Public Health Unit, authors Amy Lemay and Creso Sá report on an ethnographic study of how research is used in programmatic decision making. While the literature usually highlights the lack of knowledge and capacity of users to access and use research, this study identifies the strategies of “active users” in the Public Health context to utilize research. The study was part of the project Linking research to its uses: Making sense of how decisions are informed by research, sponsored by the Mitacs Accelerate program and CASRAI.

In the other paper, Canada-U.S. Ties and University Technology Transfer, authors Creso Sá, Andrew Kretz and Kristjan Sigurdson reveal how Canadian technological nationalism was an important factors shaping how technology transfer was practiced, organized, and legitimated between the early 20^th century through the 1970s at the University of Toronto. The study is part of the project The Institutionalization of Technology Transfer in Canada.

In September, Creso Sá, Andrew Kretz and Kristjan Sigurdson presented findings from research conducted on technology transfer activities of the University of Toronto at the 25th annual Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER) conference in Belgrade, Serbia. In the presented paper, The Institutionalization of Technology Transfer in Canada: The Roots of Research Commercialization at the University of Toronto, authors Creso Sá, Andrew Kretz and Kristjan Sigurdson explore how the routines, practices and orientations towards technology transfer evolved at the University from their beginnings in the late 1910s, up to the emergence of the University of Toronto Innovations Foundation in the 1980s. The paper presented in Belgrade is the first in a series of resulting from archival research and interviews conducted at the University of Toronto on the emergence of technology transfer activities in the Canadian context at Canada’s largest research university.