Context
This was my last assignment on Co-op with the VPRIO. It was also my largest assignment in terms of scale. The main goal was to provide recommendations for the competition's application and review process as it moved into its fifth year. Part of my role was also to determine whether the competition was fulfilling its underlying goal of nurturing UBC's emerging interdisciplinary research teams.
My Role
The primary workflow consisted of the following steps:
- A review of stakeholder feedback from the latest GCRC competition
- Noting the potential policy recommendations embedded in that feedback
- Evaluating recommendations based on four years of competition data, as well as internal discussions by competition managers
- Summarizing our process and findings into a written brief
That last step in the workflow afforded me the opportunity to bring together all the skills and partnerships that I had formed throughout my time at the VPRIO. My supervisor made it clear that it would not be enough to present numerical findings. I would have to fit these graphs and figures into the existing conversation around the competition's part in UBC's larger research excellence goals. More specifically, I had to communicate how the numbers supported its history of success and great potential moving forward. Ultimately, the experience instilled in me the value of storytelling within the field of strategic decision making--an aspect of the work that I had previously ignored.
Confronting Questions with Data
(Official numbers have been redacted for confidentiality)
