{"id":24808,"date":"2023-12-19T09:41:40","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T17:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=24808"},"modified":"2024-01-08T11:25:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T19:25:00","slug":"camosun-college-ranks-nationally-in-applied-research-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/12\/19\/camosun-college-ranks-nationally-in-applied-research-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun College ranks nationally in applied research list"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the ninth year in a row Camosun College has ranked nationally in the top 50 research colleges for 2023. This time around, the college came in at number 47 on the list, compiled by Research Infosource, a Canadian research, consulting, and publishing firm.<\/p>\n

The branch of Camosun that focuses on applied research is Camosun Innovates (CI), located at the Interurban campus. The research and development centre is for students, staff, faculty, and local businesses, and aims to use its technology and facilities to turn ideas into reality.<\/p>\n

CI director Richard Gale says that he\u2019s happy for the recognition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful opportunity to showcase the work that we\u2019re doing here at Camosun Innovates and the way that we are supporting Camosun College generally,\u201d says Gale.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun Innovates provided digitization of Indigenous art for a virtual reality version of The Witness Blanket<\/em> project (photo by Camosun College).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gale, who\u2019s been involved with CI for a little over five years, believes that the success of CI stems from its early conception and the melding of applied research, education, and work in supporting community projects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very fortunate about 12 years ago to have one of the first technology access centres in Canada, one of only five at that point,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that really gave us a jump-start on the approach that we take to applied research in general. It\u2019s a wonderful way to incorporate the educational enterprise of the college into the innovation aspirations of the local industries that support the lower island and actually really support the entire province.\u201d<\/p>\n

CI is connected to many different industries, such as agriculture, aquaculture, tourism, and breweries and distilleries, to name a few. A project completed earlier this year by the centre was the design and fabrication of a machine that measured the consistency and weight of metal powders for Envisioning Labs, a company that does research and product development in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of companies come to us because they know about the work that we\u2019ve done,\u201d says Gale. \u201cThey can literally kind of walk in the door, or call us, and say, \u2018I\u2019ve got this idea,\u2019 or, \u2018I\u2019ve got this problem,\u2019 and they know that because we\u2019re a research centre, our goal is to find a way to bring their ideas to reality, or to answer their problem in a way that is cost effective and time efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gale notes that landing on the list of the top 50 research colleges isn\u2019t a main priority for CI, but it is a positive acknowledgement of what it\u2019s doing right.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been very successful, like getting some large grants this year, we\u2019ve been very successful expanding our operations,\u201d says Gale. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a lot of work now in automation with some of the smaller companies here in town; we think that\u2019s going to only grow our impact on the students and on the community. Although we don\u2019t really aim for being part of the list of the top 50, it\u2019s an indicator that we\u2019re doing the right things. We always want to know that we\u2019re doing the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another important aspect of CI is the work opportunities it provides to students. This doesn\u2019t just include STEM students, something that Gale wants those attending Camosun to be aware of. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the main thing is to make sure that all the students on campus know that although we really are focused on manufacturing, manufacturing is all over the map,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd if any of the students on campus are interested in working with us on projects, or finding out more about how we can build into their whole college experience, we\u2019re very open to that… We\u2019ve hired a number of art students, for example, or we\u2019ve hired folks from Fine Furniture, or we\u2019ve hired folks from Business and Sociology. There are always projects that require expertise that is outside of our kind of core areas. Because we\u2019re such an interdisciplinary shop, we are working across the spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the ninth year in a row Camosun College has ranked nationally in the top 50 research colleges for 2023. This time around, the college came in at number 47 on the list, compiled by Research Infosource, a Canadian research, consulting, and publishing firm. The branch of Camosun that focuses on applied research is Camosun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,302],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-january-8-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24810,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24808\/revisions\/24810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}