The History of The Tompkins Institute

The Tompkins Institute for Human Values and Technology was established in 1974 at the Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova Scotia.

The main objective of the Institute is to investigate the impact of technological change on society in general and, more particularly, on the Cape Breton community.

The programme of the Tompkins Institute is organized around the concept of institutions as technological constructs. The major analytical themes are the concept of the university and the concept of the business corporation. Examples of case studies are the Cape Breton University itself and community business corporations such as New Dawn Enterprises, GNP Development Corporation and the BCA Complex of community finance companies.

The work of Dr. Jimmy Tompkins in the 1930’s exemplifies the kind of linkage of theory and practice that guides the Institute’s action research programmes. " It is not enough to have ideas, we have to put legs on them," was a typical statement by a man who, not only conducted many of his social experiments within two miles of the present Cape Breton University campus, but who, along with other community leaders of the day, foresaw the need for a college or university in Cape Breton that combined technology with the humanities.

The Tompkins Institute forms a liaison between the university and the local community, and today more than ten percent of the Cape Breton University faculty are involved in the various community-oriented research projects of the Institute.

The community is regarded as both an incubator and laboratory for new and alternative models in the social economy. Researchers at the Institute work with a variety of community groups to create experimental corporations which attempt to combine good technology with a commitment to community and personal development.

With a commitment to global technology transfer at many levels, the Institute looks to other countries for useful models. Its most ambitious foreign study concerned the famous Mondragon worker-owned complex in Spain.

The institute acts as a technical service provider for the community business sector in Canada through the CEDTAP programme at Carleton University in Ottawa and in Mexico through the International Development Research Center in Ottawa.

The Institute Within The University

Since the Cape Breton University is itself an innovation, offering programmes in technology as well as in the arts and sciences, the Institute, from its inception, has been involved in an examination of the basic concept of a university and the nature of its mission. Subscribing to a concept of the university that embraces the needs of the surrounding community, the Institute seeks to identify obstacles which impede the university in its broader role of community education. An attempt is made to orient the intellectual and scientific power of the university to the resolution of problems in the society where it is located.

Within the University, the Institute organizes regular faculty seminars on contemporary social and economic problems, including current research by faculty, and ethical problems posed by new technologies.

The Institute has produced reports. monographs and videotapes on various research projects in which it is engaged. Conferences sponsored by the Institute address topics such as the steel industry, community economics and government policy on development.