The Community-University Research Exchange (CURE) is a database by which students can integrate their academic research with the work of local movements and activist organizations. Through the administrative infrastructures already in place at McGill and Concordia University, students may complete a CURE research project as an independent study course, internship, or thesis advised by a departmental professor, or as a term project for an upper-level class. By connecting students to non-profit community groups with limited resources, we hope to encourage and support academic research that is socially relevant.

The CURE program was initiated by the Study in Action organizing collective and QPIRG Concordia, following the second annual Study in Action Conference in April of 2008. The program was formed as a response to concrete research needs voiced by community groups lacking resources. Through CURE, we wish to channel the resources and privilege of the University towards groups working for social change, and to provide resources for students to perform relevant, action-oriented academic work.

CURE operates on the principle that the University is an institution which maintains systems of privilege and oppression around race, class, and neocolonialism. By redirecting resources to groups and individuals in need of theory, information, and the energy to supply them, CURE encourages students to acknowledge their institutional advantage, and convert it into a useful tool for political action. We hope that by allowing students both to engage in anti-oppressive academic research, and to work with local movements for social change, CURE will begin to make rubble of the walls which enclose academic privilege.