From government, to non-governmental organization, to academics

Throughout the years, ELA has gone through its fair share of change. As a government-run facility, it saw different home departments (from the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, to the Department of Environment, to Fisheries and Oceans), people come and go and many high-profile experiments through the years that have had direct impacts on the way we govern water quality around the world today.

Having recently accepted an assistant professorship at Lakehead University, I feel I now have some interesting perspectives on ELA in terms of where it has come since I started as a research scientist with the Government of Canada, to the transition of operating independently as IISD-ELA, and the role of academic connections under both structures.

I believe it goes without saying that while we have faced challenges through the transition, the move to an independent operation has been overwhelmingly positive. As a smaller organization, we are far more nimble than we were under the bureaucracy of the government, and we have an incredible media relations team that helps us and supports the communication of our work to the world.

My new position provides me with a means of staying connected to IISD-ELA as a research fellow, and creates a new and unique link to Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. While we have had academic involvement and partnerships in past ELA experiments, this relationship forges a new means of connecting universities and the IISD-ELA. It opens up training opportunities, including field courses as well as graduate student involvement, and many opportunities for research funding through the tri-council granting agencies. Additionally, it is helping us forge a long-term relationship with the university community that has the potential to become much stronger and mutually beneficial than we have seen in the past.

To say that the IISD-ELA has gone through changes since I signed on as a research scientist in 2010 would be an understatement; to think we are done with change there would be naïve. But the changes we are looking to in the future with new relationships like the one with Lakehead University make me excited to see where that takes us, and to remain a part of the team that helps guide our path into the future.