BRINGING RESEARCH TO THE FORE. LESSONS FROM DEVELOPING A GREATER RESEARCH CULTURE IN A STEM DEPARTMENT WITHIN A TEACHING-FOCUSED UNIVERSITY

Research can often be a fringe or niche activity in many teaching-focused universities, where learning and teaching can often dominate to the exclusion of other activities. This paper aims to evaluate the progress made and techniques used since 2010 to develop a greater research culture in a STEMfocused faculty comprising 4 schools, 3 of which had little research activity prior to 2010. The paper traces the development of a research culture, based on a Grounded Theory Analysis of interviews with staff, which led to the submission of high quality research from all four schools to the UK Government’s Research Excellence Framework in 2014. It critically examines a range of initiatives that were designed to build capacity for research, which had varying degrees of success. The analysis identifies three elements of a research culture and three related drivers of research culture.