Research

Research Mission

We achieve research relevant to enabling health and well-being through occupation by actively seeking resources in the form of collaborations, funding, and opportunities for dissemination. To provide high calibre learning and mentorship opportunities for students, professional colleagues and new faculty we endeavour to integrate components of individual research programs across the Department. Our priority setting is guided by the University's Dare to Discover, Dare to Deliver mandate and the resources it offers to participate in meaningful research and recruitment of world-class students.

Research Vision

Our stakeholder communities will identify research from the Department of Occupational Therapy as being of high quality and worth supporting through collaborators, funding, and opportunities for dissemination in ways that inform best practice and demonstrate a true impact on occupation as a vehicle to health and well-being.

Research Values

The researchers at the Department of Occupational Therapy share core values that reflect our enthusiasm, scholarly inquisitiveness and desire to affect real change through quality work. We articulate these core values, congruent with the University of Alberta's visionary Dare to Discover, Dare to Deliver mandate, as follows:

Talented People

We value the diversity of departmental faculty, clinical colleagues and students who generate both the questions and the strategies for answering these questions. As part of this process we believe in capacity building, mentoring and recruitment of the highest quality students who will become future researchers. We also value working towards collaborative research and resource sharing activities that set aside traditional inter-professional rivalries and competition.

Learning, Discover and Citizenship

We value the funding support and recognition afforded by others as indicators of our position as partners in the global community of researchers and innovators. This position serves as an indicator to others that the work we carry out and the opportunities we offer to students pursuing research careers are creditable and valuable.

Connecting Communities

We value collaborator and stakeholder partnerships both locally and internationally for the broadness of perspective and opportunity to create synergy and innovation that they offer.

Transformative Organization and Support

We value the privilege of carrying out research that is driven by the question and not by the environmental constraints. To that end we foster capacity building in methodology, application of novel and emerging research approaches and dissemination outside of the traditional routes. We see our work with students and colleagues as a vehicle to achieve a vibrant and dynamic intellectual space. We also value and recognize the need for strong co-ordination and co- ordination of the administrative elements required to achieve our mission and vision.