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REDUCING ADMINISTRATIVE BARRIERS TO RESEARCH
VPRI portfolio lead
Shelley Gair
Executive Director, Office of the Vice President Research & Innovation
On this Page:
Challenge
Faculty members have identified “lack of time” as the biggest constraint in increasing their research output. For individual faculty members, balancing the competing demands of research, teaching and service is challenging. For department chairs, school directors and deans, balancing the need to deliver academic programming—and to support a dynamic research environment—is also challenging.
Action
Consulting with deans, chairs and directors, ADRs and SFU Faculty Relations, we will identify barriers to availability and effective use of research time for faculty members. Best practices across faculties, schools and departments will be shared and places where flexibility exists in the system (e.g., course scheduling/stacking) and within the current collective agreement will be examined.
Project Goals
Begin consultations with several Faculties and centralized units to help identify administrative barriers that researchers are experiencing that take time away from conducting research
- February 2026
Consultations have started with with three additional Faculties - Faculty of Education, Faculty of Environment, and Faculty of Applied Science. - October 2025
Ongoing meetings with other units (Research Accounting, Research Services, Finance, Procurement, ITS, HR, etc.) to share feedback and get their perspective on issues as well as follow up conversations with faculty members and administrative staff within the Faculties. - August 2025
Information gathered from the three Faculties through interviews, meetings and surveys, and prioritized issues based on importance to the Faculty, commonalities with other two Faculties (and Uniforum survey), and impact (both short and long term). - July 2025
Faculty of Health Sciences volunteered to participate in the project, and consultations with them were subsequently initiated. - April 2025
Consultations have started with two Faculties – Faculty of Science and Faculty of Communications, Art, and Technology (FCAT) to better understand the current administrative barriers thar researchers in their Faculty are experiencing that negatively impact research. These faculties were chosen because their strategic plans align well with the goals of this project, and they represent very different research methodologies/needs, which will help provide a different perspective on administrative barriers experienced.
Identify short-term improvements and longer-term solutions to address prioritized items.
- September 2025
A number of administrative issues have been identified. Based on the collected data, we have determined the four highest-impact administrative barriers and are actively working through them.
Support centralized units in preparing proposals for longer term solutions
Update the community on project progress and and on short-term improvements and longer-term solutions.
- February 2026
Regular updates are being provided to the faculties consulted on the project, as well as to other appropriate stakeholder groups.