Henry Yu: When I’m asked how we’ve done what we’ve done, I emphasize that we’ve worked hard on learning and listening through our partnerships. These partnerships have become the center of our sustainable practices. Starting with a set of people you don’t know, and who don’t know you, there will naturally be mistrust. Vicky already addressed this; the history of universities in communities is not a good one. The mistrust is there for good reason. Universities have often been extractive, engaging in what we call hit-and-run research, where the researcher gets what they want and then disappears.
These hit-and-run experiences make it hard for those of us who genuinely want to have sustainable projects. Many of our ethics criteria aim to protect community partners. Indigenous communities, for instance, have forced universities to screen researchers who don’t understand what it means to work with them. From a university perspective, sustainability means that students and researchers should not be allowed to engage with off-campus communities until they understand the history and acknowledge that they may be part of the problem. Are they genuinely contributing to a solution, or are they perpetuating a history of extractive research?
Allowing projects that are not sustainable or ethical exacerbates reputational risks for the university. Each hit-and-run project that we greenlight might seem beneficial in the short term, bringing in substantial funding and even promotions, but it’s antithetical to the sustainability of research practices. These projects make it harder for those of us who are continually engaged in sustainable research, and they also hinder the next good idea or researcher trying to build trust with historically marginalized and vulnerable communities, like Indigenous communities.
Vicky Bungay: Yeah, thinking about achieving sustainability, I think it all comes back to building relationships, as we already said. But there’s also this piece about really shifting out of just what Henry said about the rescue or the researcher as the expert, or how we even conceptualize community and people. It’s about really attending to what the strengths are.
At the core of sustainability for me is recognizing those strengths. Communities often already know what solutions are needed, depending on how you define community. They don’t frame things as problems but as opportunities to continue building capacity and improving the quality of life for everyone within the community.
Listening and attending to these insights is probably one of the greatest strategies to unpack assumptions, biases, and even some of the science that has come before. It’s about focusing on the strengths that many communities, especially those who have experienced marginalization, already possess. These communities don’t frame themselves by demographic characteristics or problems; they see their lives as shared experiences. It’s about identifying who the wise ones are and listening to them.
In considering how to achieve this, it’s about approaching with curiosity, knowing your strengths, and understanding how you move through the world. Recognize how you might be part of the challenges communities face, and own that.
Students often come to me saying they want to do this work, and it’s great to see that enthusiasm. My first question is always, “Have you worked in that community? How have you come to this place?” Often, they’ll mention working with patients who have experienced certain things. But partnering with a community and asking me to facilitate entry isn’t that simple. Navigating how you introduce people is another crucial element of sustainability.
People, especially in the academic sector, often ask for introductions to communities. We want to support respectful engagement, as fostering this growth is important. But how you think about the team, who gets invited, and how they’re introduced is crucial. For example, when we’re asked if people can use our advisory committee, my response is always to provide a one-page summary. I’ll take it to the advisory and share it with them. It’s their decision, not mine, whether to invite someone to a meeting.
Once you’re engaged, there’s a lot of responsibility to contribute to the safety of that community and understand what that relationship means. Navigating and negotiating these aspects sensitively is essential for meaningful and respectful collaboration.
Henry Yu: It’s like with the access issue; I don’t know how many times I could fill a jar if I had a quarter for every time someone asks me, “Can you introduce me?” or “Can you give me this?” Often, these are access questions, like needing a letter of support for a grant or something similar. I’m always careful not to say outright that I’m protecting my relationships from them, but in my head, I know that if they screw up, I’ll be the one who has to fix my relationship with others. So, I have to be very careful about how to protect those relationships.
Sustainability is funny because it’s like a marriage. There are lots of bad marriages, with infinite varieties of what makes them bad. But a good, sustainable model involves high communication and multiple iterative processes. It’s about constantly checking where we are with partners and within our own team. There’s a sort of succession planning that constantly asks, “How do we bring new students in sustainably?” and “How do we ensure that the learnings of those moving on are passed on to the existing team?” It’s about not just listening, but listening, learning, applying, and if something doesn’t work, trying something else. There is this need for adaptability and evolution, which [Vicky] mentioned.
You can’t think you’ve got it all figured out with a Gantt chart and a timeline. Just because it’s your timing doesn’t mean it’s going to work for anyone else. There might need to be adjustments to the Gantt chart, and you may need staged processes where a phase might not finish on time. You might need to go back and rethink things. So, to me, it’s about a lot of staging, succession planning, and thinking about long-term viability and how to maintain it. It’s important not to overpromise and underdeliver. Instead, you need to be very careful with your commitments. They’re not just promises; they’re commitments you must meet. Never promise anything you aren’t committed to fulfilling.
Vicky Bungay: That piece about commitment is so important. You have to be clear on what you can and can’t accomplish. One of the challenges is that research moves slowly. Nothing happens fast in research, especially when compared to the fast pace of everyday life, whether it’s people providing services or other activities that require quick adaptation and flexibility to address emergent issues within their organizations and communities.
Understanding that research has its own timeframe is crucial. People are happy to work together and you’ve built a great relationship, but there’s also this need to understand what research really looks like and the different ways to conduct it. One of the things to focus on is building capacity. It’s about understanding what research entails, what’s required for funding, and what’s needed for peer review. Being transparent about these elements is key—not to overwhelm people or make them responsible for all these pieces, but to communicate effectively about them.
These elements are part of the institution or industry of research, and knowing how to navigate them is important. Being responsive to emergent changes is also essential. You need to design your research in a way that it can be adaptable and flexible. If it isn’t, that conversation needs to happen upfront. If this is the only money you have and you can only do things a certain way, that needs to be clear. Alternatively, you need to consider how to build in flexibility to adapt to changes as they come.
Henry Yu: I think that also speaks to what our strategic goals are as a university. If our goal is simply to create research knowledge, we need to be extremely careful about understanding what we’re doing and why, as it could potentially lead to bad outcomes inherently.
Creating new knowledge, for me, often feels redundant. From the perspective of community members, many times we already know what needs to be known. We just need validation so that when we apply for a grant, it’s recognized officially. There’s a sense in which we might be doing nothing more than formalizing, for grant purposes, something that our partners already understand well.
