The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) has launched a new initiative to showcase faculty research.

Modelled after Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, “Researchers on Campus Getting Coffee” is a series featuring short video clips of professors from the FHS being interviewed about their research.

“The faculty welcomes between ten and fifteen researchers every year, and we wanted to have a vehicle to introduce new faculty members and researchers to internal audience members, including other faculty members, staff, and students and to get them excited about what all the new researchers are doing,” Elizabeth Cooper, a marketing and communications coordinator with the FHS, told The Journal in an interview. 

“Talking about research, especially if you’re a layperson, can be a little bit dry, so we wanted to have a playful, lighthearted format to discuss research, and also to make it accessible and take something more complicated research and explain it fairly clearly by the end of the video.”

The first video of the series was posted on Nov. 9. 

Cooper told The Journal five videos were filmed before the COVID-19 pandemic reached Kingston, but she’s hoping the series can continue in another way.

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Cooper said the primary goal of the video campaign is to get people on campus excited about the research being done within the FHS, as well as make research more accessible on campus.

“Faculty members are already so busy with their own research and it’s really easy for us to get lost in our own work, so I think it’s really great to see what other people are doing [on campus], get excited about it, and build a research community,” Cooper said.

“Not everyone wants to read a paper on someone’s research.”

Professor Amber Simpson, who is cross appointed in the School of Computing and the FHS, appeared in the third video installment of the series. She agreed that making research accessible to the Queen’s community and the general public is important.

“For a long time, research and academia and the Ivory Tower was something that was separate for so many people,” Simpson said. “It’s really important for me [that] everyone [sees] themselves in this world we’re in and for people to identify with it. I think [this campaign] provides the opportunity for that.”

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Simpson noted that the series offered a way for the University community to further experience faculty on a personal level, which is also of great importance. 

She also said that the format of the video campaign is unique in the sense that it allows viewers to become interested in the series. 

“The series is interesting in the sense that it goes after authenticity in media,” she said. “I think the people that were interviewed for the series were able to be themselves in the series, regardless of whatever else is happening in the world.” 

“I think that was something that was done really well in the series and that the series captured really well.”     

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