What happened, by coincidence, is that many of the department members at that time retired over a short period of time resulting in a relatively large-scale turnover of the faculty. Four of us, who account for most of the highly cited papers, arrived in Regina within two years of each other: Peter Leavitt, Harold Weger, Scott Wilson, and me.

It’s hard to say and it was certainly more than one thing. In Canada during the early ‘90s, getting a job in academia was very difficult—there were far more Ph.D.’s than there were positions. The best example of how this affected us would probably be Leavitt. He currently holds a Tier I Canada Research Chair, which is reserved for people who are exceptionally bright, capable, and productive over a long period of time, and considered to be leaders in their field. By that measure, he is one of the best researchers in the country. When he was hired here, he had been previously interviewed for positions at seven or eight other institutions without success. I do not know how well those people who were hired before him at other institutions have done, but clearly Leavitt was and is a wonderful addition to our faculty.

Because we are a small department we generally do different things. Most often faculty members have been hired with a view to how their interests fit into the teaching program of the Department so that we can offer a coherent program. Thus our research interests vary broadly from molecular genetics to population ecology. We work on a variety of organisms ranging from vertebrates to algae in aquatic and terrestrial habitats.

He was a student of Leavitt. After doing a post-doctoral fellowship elsewhere, we hired him as a faculty member. He stayed for three or four years and then was recruited by the University of Alberta, a more research-intensive university, which tells us that we made a very good choice in hiring him in the first place.

Teamwork is very important. We have a group of people who I think genuinely enjoy each other’s company and thus are more inclined to work toward a common goal. This is not to say that we agree about the best ways to do everything but when disagreements arise, I think that compromise is commonly reached and everyone’s ideas are respected. We also do a good job of sharing the departmental administrative load. While I would say that there is relatively little research collaboration between members of the Department, I don’t think there is less than you would find in other Departments. I attribute this mostly to our small size—currently 11 faculty members—and because we work in different areas. Therefore it’s not always convenient or easy for Department members to collaborate on research projects. We do collaborate a great deal with colleagues in other Departments in the University and with colleagues outside the institution. One aspect of research in which we do work collaboratively on as a Department is grantsmanship. We have built considerable expertise in helping colleagues write highly competitive applications to a wide variety of organizations that support research. Our overall application rate and success rate is very high in my estimation.

At the risk of being facetious, mostly they stayed out of the way. I would say the principal reason we’ve done well is we hired high-quality faculty who are self-motivated and like doing research. Having said that, the last two Deans of the Faculty of Science have certainly promoted research to a much greater degree than was done before. This is reflected in higher standards required to secure promotions and achieve tenure. The Faculty has continued to improve the level of start-up funding; matching funds for successful grant applications and space renovations for new faculty members so that research programs can be established early on in the career.

The Faculty of Science has also been successful in securing financial support for research from the upper level administration in the form of one-time injections of funds over the past few years. The direct support for research has been combined in the case of new faculty with a gradual ramping up (typically over three years) to a full teaching load which indirectly supports research. In my view, this strategy allows the opportunity for professors to establish their research program while having enough time to develop quality teaching.

There are considerably more funding opportunities for research in Canada now than there were 15 years ago. New programs such as the NSERC Strategic grants program, the Canada Research Chair program, and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation have all contributed substantially to project and infrastructure funding for research. These funds require some level of matching contribution from the University and/or the Province. The Provincial Government has been quick to ante up, being one, if not the only, Province to match funding levels for the first two years of each Canada Research Chair. These programs and this support have helped us considerably. It must also be said however that the people here have found innovative ways to find sources of funding to support their research.

I go back to the group of faculty hired in the early 1990s that account for most of the highly cited papers in our Department. The increase in public interest and awareness about ecology and climate change may have helped. Leavitt and Vinebrooke worked on ultraviolet radiation and its impact. Leavitt has recently been examining the influence of urban sewage, even after being treated, on increasing nutrient levels, leading to algal blooms in lakes.

Weger’s fundamental work on the requirements for iron by algae has likely benefited from the proposed implications of algae to mediate climate change. The idea is that carbon sequestration could be markedly increased by "fertilizing" the middle of the ocean with iron, which would promote significant algal growth. This would remove significant amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere, the carbon from which would then be taken to the bottom when the algae died. While the practicality of the idea is unlikely, it has been popular and thus Weger’s work has had an even greater impact than it might have otherwise.

Wilson’s work in competition has been popular in ecology for several decades. Clearly his work has be perceived as important by his peers and led to considerable citations. His research likely contributed to a recent focus on preserving native plants in prairies and native grasslands.

The point, though, is that there is not one thing in particular that has changed in the department or changed externally to effect the department. We have a group of highly capable people who work hard and have come into their prime together at a time when there has been a paradigm shift in the institution and increased funding opportunities to support research. The prospects for our Department look extremely bright given the next cadre of talented people who are beginning to make their mark as well. I really do look forward to seeing what our index value is in 10 more years!

What our department really considers important is that a faculty member really has two major jobs. We can’t be complete just by doing research and the institution is not best served if all we do is teach. The best institutions put emphasis on both. We perceive research to be important and we reward people who are active and do good scholarship. At the same time we expect them to teach well. I think it laudable that over the past several years we have had three full professors involved in the teaching of our first year biology classes. Furthermore, tangible evidence of our performance has come in the form of Institutional awards for Teaching, Research, and Service to members of the Department. I believe this is indicative of the fact that we do consider teaching and research equally important. Our students as well as our research programs are best served in this way.