Career Interruptions Special Circumstances Statement Tiers 1 and 2

Our CRC Selection Committee recognizes that applicants for Canada Research Chair (CRC) positions are at different career stages and may have experienced career interruptions or special circumstances that impacted their research productivity. In order to help the committee assess applicants’ records as accurately and equitably as possible, we invite all applicants for CRC positions at Carleton University to provide an optional statement outlining any career interruptions or special circumstances that may have affected their research activities:

• Career interruptions occur when researchers are taken away from their research work for an extended period of time for health, administrative, family, or other reasons, or reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Special circumstances involve slowdowns in research productivity or any circumstances that impact the progression of academic careers in a distinctive way. Applicants can indicate that their research work was impacted by circumstances related to health (and/or disability), administrative, family, cultural or community responsibilities, socio-economic context, COVID-19, or other factors. For example, applicants from small institutions could indicate their teaching load if the change in workload impacted their research output, or Indigenous applicants could describe special circumstances that may have had an impact on their academic or career paths.

When considering how to describe your career interruptions and/or special circumstances, please do not include or attach any private medical information or diagnosis, and there is no need to disclose any personal details of the career interruption or special circumstance. However, to enable the committee to make an equitable assessment of the impact of the interruption(s) or special circumstance(s) on your research production, please:

• provide dates of interruptions;
• indicate the reason for the delay in general terms (e.g., illness, disability, family loss or illness, cultural or community responsibilities, socio-economic context, COVID-19);
• indicate how your research was impacted by delays; and
• estimate how much time was lost due to the interruption(s) or special circumstance(s).

Please include your statement with your application.

The information included in this additional statement will be shared with the CRC selection committee for consideration alongside your application package as part of their assessment. Committee members are prohibited by Carleton policies from sharing this information outside of the CRC selection process.