The Research Support Fund assists Canadian postsecondary institutions with the indirect costs of managing their research enterprise. Indirect costs of research include research administration and the costs of meeting regulatory requirements, training, and the provision and maintenance of research facilities, among other things.
Institutions have the flexibility to decide how to use their Research Support Fund allocations, provided they are used for the payment of current expenditures of indirect costs attributed to federally sponsored research that falls in the following five categories:
- Research facilities
- Research resources
- Management and administration of the institution’s research enterprise
- Regulatory requirements and accreditation
- Intellectual property and knowledge mobilization
YukonU is using the Research Support Fund (RSF) to invest in the university’s research enterprise in the following ways:
Research facilities. The RSF is used to maintain shared research equipment at YukonU, and to manage and maintain shared research spaces to ensure equipment is dependable and space allows for productive research at the university.
Research resources. The RSF is used to acquire library holdings in support of research and to support the university’s membership in the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.
Management and administration of the institution’s research enterprise. The RSF is used to provide faculty, staff and students with access to research administration services, including pre- and post-award administration and financial support. It also supports implementing institutional Equity, Diversity and Inclusion objectives, and research-related training and professional development.
Regulatory requirements and accreditation. The RSF provides resources to the university’s Research Ethics Board and Animal Care Committee to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
Intellectual property and knowledge mobilization. The RSF provides support for public outreach activities to transfer knowledge.
Student Researcher Training
With funds from the Research Support Fund, YukonU hosted its second annual summer student training in May 2025. The two-day workshop brought together YukonU student researchers from across the Yukon, in research areas including health, social work, climate change, geology, oceanography, Indigenous governance, and remote energy systems. With guest presenters, students explored topics such as research ethics; equity, diversity and inclusion in research; and Indigenous research and community participation. The student researchers also gained hands-on skills in Excel and database searching.
The days were full of energy as students shared their upcoming summer research plans, enjoyed meals and outdoor time together, and had the opportunity to ask a panel of research supervisors questions around managing workload and career development. The funding from RSF allowed students conducting research in the North valuable opportunities for learning, skill development and connection building.
Reenvisioning Internal Research Funding
Funding from the Research Support Fund provided YukonU's Research Services Office (RSO) staff with dedicated personnel time in 2025-26 to focus on an extensive overhaul of the university’s internal research-development fund, the Scholarly Activity Grant program, in order to better support and foster more relational research.
This work was a meaningful step towards several of the calls to action in YukonU’s Breaking the Dawn Reconciliation Framework, and RSO staff took the lead on building consensus across the university about what the internal funding landscape should look like to better support researchers, how adjudication decisions could be made with greater clarity and transparency, and how to best prioritize the co-creation of research projects with Yukon First Nation partners as relationships allow and opportunities arise.
The newly reenvisioned Scholarly Activity and Research Community Awards (SARCA) program not only provides a broadly inclusive avenue for research development, but now also reframes relationship-building and maintenance activities as essential areas of investment in order to facilitate equitable research and scholarly practice in the context of the Yukon and the circumpolar region more broadly. Importantly, the extensive efforts of this consensus-building work have led to new opportunities to further grow the institutional supports for research at YukonU, with new work towards better research evaluation frameworks emerging as a key area for ongoing improvement.