Share.Learn.Inspire.Transform
“As I head into my last year in the Dal MBA program, there are several lessons I’ve learned that have enriched my work, life and learning experience. Create your balance. Connect & Collaborate. Participate in debate. Have fun”.
-Anthony Ricci, MBA(L) Candidate, Class of 2022-
Anthony Ricci, MBA(L) Candidate (Class of 2022)
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Read Anthony’s full article here
Republished from Faculty of Management, Research, Research Profiles
FoM Researcher Profile
Our work is guided by two teachings. One is Pettigrew’s idea of engaged scholarship, research and teaching that engages with broader society to produce piercing and perceptive knowledge for the benefit of all (Van de Ven, 2007). The second teaching comes to us from Albert Marshall, Etuaptmumk (two eyed seeing): viewing research through both an Indigenous lens looking at the traditional knowledge, culture and practices while using a Western lens to address the science behind why traditional practices, methods and materials work the way they do.
Our goal is to add our expertise to that of Indigenous people with whom we collaborate to create knowledge that benefits our Indigenous partners and society-at-large. We seek to understand what decolonized learning means to members of Generation Z, so that our Indigenous partners can use this knowledge to further strengthen their communities and so that our universities can be better partners with those on whose land we live and work.
Republished from Faculty of Management, News & Events
Suzanne Bowness – Student, News, June 3, 2021
Anya Daradics has long known that she wanted to work for the federal government, and eventually in management. No surprise then that such a goal-oriented person was on the lookout for the right program to get her there. She found it in Dalhousie’s Master of Public Administration (Management).
By the time she started the program, Daradics was already well on her way to accomplishing her early career goals. A naval reservist since high school, she completed her bachelor’s degree in 2010 in political science at Carleton University, then landed her first job working for the Canada Border Services Agency in Ottawa as a program officer. From there she moved to Transport Canada as a Maritime Security Analyst, then on to Public Safety Canada as a program officer. She also moved back to the Vancouver area.
Today she’s returned to Transport Canada as Emergency Management Program Manager, where she is responsible for emergency management training, preparedness and response for Canada’s Pacific region. It’s a job she loves in a setting that suits her. “I’m a very passionate federal government employee. I enjoy going to work every day probably because I’m a problem solver,” says Daradics.
Given her commitment to public service, choosing a master’s program that was familiar to those in her field was important. “I chose Dalhousie because it was a good fit for working full time, and because it was a program recognized as being very suitable for federal government employees.” Daradics began her program in 2017, and says she’s liked the flexibility of blended learning to balance her busy work life, along with her family (she has a one-year-old and two step-children aged 9 and 13) and her responsibilities as an active naval reservist serving in middle management.
Daradics says her favourite courses have included Intergovernmental Relations, Strategic Management in the Public Sector and Policy Formulation and Analysis; she liked the balance of academic and theoretical. “The instructors did such a great job of balancing academics, postgraduate education and the public service,” says Daradics. She points to one of her favourite professors, Lori Turnbull, as someone who brings examples of problems she’d encounter on the job for students to dig into. “If you’re really passionate about your work, it’s a joy to be in the classroom working under her because you feel like you’re just trying to solve the problem of the day,” says Daradics.
Daradics also liked the flexibility to work on assignments that related directly to her own work. For example, in an elective course she took through the MBA program last term, she wrote a paper on change management in her current organization. She’s since referenced the paper in meetings when the topic has come up. Finally, she enjoyed the face-to-face intensive component of the program, despite attending only one in Halifax (she turned the opportunity into a short vacation with her mother in the summer), and the others in Alberta and Ottawa where she combined them with work trips. “They were very rewarding times, especially some of the intensives when I’ve walked away thinking, ‘wow, that was such an engaging conversation.’ Everyone in the room cares so much about government,” recalls Daradics.
Now that she has graduated, Daradics is already recommending the program to others. “I’ve had a few colleagues investigate whether this program was suitable for them. I tell them I felt like it was worth my time and brought me benefit. This program provides you with a really in-depth understanding, from an academic perspective, of the way the federal government in Canada works,” says Daradics. “Especially if you’re at the management level, you don’t always have the time to understand the way the government is supposed to run. In an academic setting, you get the opportunity to really understand from a theoretical perspective the way it’s supposed to work.
While she’s glad to wrap up one element in her busy life, Daradics says the benefits are worth the balancing. “If you can juggle it all and prioritize the workload, it is really rewarding at the end that you’ve accomplished something even as you are working on your career.”
“In my final few courses of the MBA Leadership program and I could not be prouder of this accomplishment. I started on this journey in the winter of 2016 and expect to graduate in the spring of 2022. When I decided to pursue a Master’s degree, I considered several other Universities, however it was the blended program delivery and the flexibility at Dalhousie that was the deciding factor. A key part of my decision-making process was the work life balance”.
-Judith Chambers, MBA(L) Candidate, Class of 2022-
Judith Chambers, MBA(L) Candidate (Class of 2022)
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Republished from Faculty of Management, News & Events
Suzanne Bowness – Alumni & Friends, June 18, 2021
Juliana Serroul is both a staffer and a learner at Dalhousie. By day, she’s director of research in the Faculty of Health. By night (and weekends and some intensive days), she’s a student in the Master of Information Management (MIM) program.
Well, she was until very recently. Now, as she graduates from the program, Serroul (shown right) has begun to get some of those after-hours back after a dedicated journey that started in back 2013.
While she may be on campus, Serroul chose the MIM program in part because it was completely online, allowing her to continue working full time.
When she started classes, she was in a different job in Dal’s Office of Research Services, overseeing the office’s database and its information management processes.
Already, she could also see how the MIM program would benefit not only her current work but her continued trajectory in research administration.
Serroul says she most enjoyed courses like Management of Privacy, User Experience and Knowledge Management. Even though she took her undergraduate degree in the Faculty of Management, she says the graduate-level courses featured a different presentation of material, “less textbook and more practical,” with many professors bringing current expertise and experience from their work in the field.
She also really appreciated the two-day intensives where students met face to face.
“They provided all the perspectives from your peers. Sometimes it was a validation of what you were thinking, and other times it was the complete opposite. But then you’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way,’” recalls Serroul, adding that her peers also expressed enthusiasm for this part of the program.
“I think most people would say that was the most valuable part of the program because it brings it all together and your fellow students are there as well.”
Serroul also appreciated the MIM’s flexibility. When her job responsibilities became more intense, she put the program on pause for a couple of years and then reengaged when she moved to her new position — where, she adds, she found the program’s lessons equally relevant.
“We’re looking at records management currently in the research unit. And also program evaluation, we’re looking at processes and working towards improving and/or changing them. That’s the difference in this program—you can actually take what you learn and apply it immediately.”
Serroul says she found the courses relevant even from a life perspective, particularly the discussions on topics such as privacy. “In the capstone, we did a wrap-up exercise about how we felt about the program and information management as a field. We were asked to reflect on our opinion when we started, and if that had changed over the course of the program. And it totally did,” says Serroul. She notes that she and her colleagues expressed a sense that their early view of the field was fairly narrow, focused on libraries and records management, but that the program opened them up to realizing the field was much broader.
“It touches every part of your life, whether professional or personal. You’re dealing with information all the time and you don’t even realize it. It’s just so ingrained in everything. It becomes apparent that it is a very broad field, and it’s still evolving.”
“As I reflect on my experiences at DAL, the continued education has been a rewarding experience. I first started in 2019 not knowing what to expect of graduate level studies. Being able to work and study (and do it well) was important to me. As I am nearing the end of the program, I have a more wholistic lens on my academic experience and how it relates to the work I do everyday”.
-Andrew Bonomo, MBA(L) Candidate, Class of 2022-
Andrew Bonomo, MBA(L) Candidate (Class of 2022)
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Republished from Faculty of Management, Research, Research Profiles
FoM Researcher Profile: 2020-2021
Dr. Sandra Toze is exploring how key changes including social, mobile, analytics, cloud and automation are affecting how we find, interact and use information to solve problems and to learn. Her research centres on three related themes: 1) collaborative information and data processes of groups; 2) digital governance; and 3) user-specific, social and mobile information interactions.
Her thesis work focused on better understanding how groups work with information. Outcomes included a better conceptualization of group information processes, which identified how and when information needs emerge, the tools and sources used to facilitate the finding of information and the tasks and activities required by groups to use information collectively. This work identified points where interventions can be made to enhance group effectiveness and provided specific evidence of the features and tools needed to better support group information process.
Dr. Toze was a collaborator in a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant – Transforming Government Work for the Digital Era, which facilitated discussion across Canada. More recently Dr. Toze was the primary investigator for a training needs analysis that examined digital competencies across the Government of Canada. Recommendations included the need to broaden and deepen digital literacy and to foster a more proactive training culture.
Based on her prior work experience, Dr. Toze also serves as an expert in examining and offering insights into the effect of interruptions on search, in designing task-sensitive retrieval systems, and in researching further aspects of social and mobile information interactions.
“It’s been a busy 5 years, but I have enjoyed my experience at Dalhousie a great deal. Besides the curriculum, the relationships built and the networking throughout the program with varying perspectives enhanced the learning greatly. Here’s to the future everyone!”
-Steven Cowan, MBA(L), Class of 2021-
Steven Cowan, MBA(L), Class of 2021
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“…resiliency is developed by moving through complex situations without being prepared”.
Matt Allen, MBA(L), Class of 2021
Matt Allen, MBA(L), Class of 2021
Matt Allen has been keeping busy since graduating from Dalhousie’s CEGE MBA, Leadership program in 2021. Like many recent Alumni, Matt has had to quickly adjust to a new pace of life as he figures out his next steps and anticipates his new journey.
Matt shares with CEGE Connection what it felt like to accomplish his MBA, what his immediate plans were once he graduated, and his biggest transition to come into fatherhood. Matt has agreed to share more with us as his learnings continue.
Matt Allen
It has been approximately six months since I last logged in to Brightspace, where I dragged and dropped my final paper into the assignment box and hit submit to cap off my Dalhousie MBA. After clicking submit, I felt fulfilled knowing I completed the goal I sought out to accomplish; however, what came next? I felt as though I had three years of catch up to complete all while putting the information buzzing around in my head into action in the workplace. I really had no idea what to do next, so I did what any of my colleagues would have done. I tried to do it all.
First, I immediately took a vacation to spend some time with my wife and family to catch up on time I had put on hold for the past three years, I developed a strategy within my group at my organization to increase the value within our roles and started to deploy said strategy, and last but most important, I had to quickly figure out how to be a father as my wife was wrapping up her first trimester of pregnancy. What seemed like a huge weight off my shoulders was more in line with the words of one of my classmates, “When you think you are complete and done, really you are only 33% of the way there.” (Kyle Nickason – 2021 Valedictorian)
In the months following August 2021, I exhausted myself trying to keep busy while transitioning back to a regular non-graduate student type of life, and it took me several months to do so and get into a rhythm. For the first month or so I would come home from work by opening the door to my second bedroom and wonder what I needed to get done that evening to make sure I was not behind in the rest of my life. On top of that my workplace was preparing for me to return to normalcy with a long list of surprise to do’s that popped up from the new owner of our organization, as our company was recently purchased and being taken private in the fall of 2021. While I had anticipated life getting back to normal after I completed my MBA, it had other plans in place.
Looking back on August 2021, I overlooked the upcoming COVID challenges associated with the Omnicom variant, delayed my value creation strategy as the organization I was a part of switched ownership and transitioned its mission, and prepared for fatherhood as I was completely clueless to what I needed to know and still am to some degree on what I can do as a male to support the birth of a child I can only feel kick through my wife’s belly.
From these last six months, I learned that planning has its limitations, and that resiliency is developed by moving through complex situations without being prepared. How you figure things out on the fly and the attitude you bring to the table are the only two ingredients you can have in times of transition. These are skills that I did not know that I learned throughout my MBA journey; however, are things that I am much better at dealing with now that I have my MBA because I practiced these for the last three years!
“Advance Practice Respitory Therapist Reflection: The sacrifices endured towards completing this program are no comparison to those undertaken by our spouses, friends and families. In no instance was this a lone effort. Cheers to them.”
-Sébastien Tessier, MBA(L), Class of 2021-
Sébastien Tessier MBA(L), Class of 2021
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