Originally posted by Scott A.E. Smith.

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks in the Corporate Residency MBA program. The past fortnight has included a weekend-long integrative project, a series of in-depth reports and presentations, and most recently, a very intense, highly anticipated mid-term exam in Dr. Rick Nason’s finance class.

Of course, it doesn’t end there. There are more presentations today, MBA Society elections this week, reports due this week and next, case and interview competitions this month and a seemingly endless to-do list of other ‘deliverables’ on the Class of 2013?s calendar.

Through it all, maintaining a sense of humour and having some fun occasionally—what you might call ‘the lighter side of the Dal MBA’—has been essential.

After the particularly grueling 72-hour integrative case project on the last weekend of October, most of the class was recovering and getting ready for Dr. Nason’s class the next morning. That usually means putting the finishing touches on that week’s assignment, reading a few newspapers to know what’s going on in the world of finance and perhaps doing some extra problems from the textbook for practice.

But for first-year Corporate Residency MBA student Christie Lang, getting ready for class the next day (which happened to be Halloween) meant doing all of the above, plus a little something… extra. To be specific, it meant fashioning 36 bow ties out of craft-store cloth and 36 sets of eyeglasses out of pipe-cleaners. Now, the perfectly logical question is: why? Many of us know how hard it is to make one Halloween costume—never mind 36 of them!

As most of the class was glumly resigned to not dressing up for the occasion this year, given how much work there was to be done, Christie and a few others had thought of an idea to bring a little bit of the Halloween spirit to Dr. Nason’s finance class.

 

You see, aside from his brilliant, inspirational lectures and boundless knowledge of all things finance (well, business in general), Dr. Nason is well-known around the Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building for his distinctive attire. He can be counted on, day in and day out, to be sporting one of his trademark bow-ties, cuff-links, and spectacles—as you can see in the photograph above (with Ms. Lang herself).

So the idea, and the reason Christie spent Sunday evening making all those glasses and bow-ties, was to have the whole class dress up as Dr. Nason the next day, both as a bit of Halloween fun and as a tribute to one of the program’s outstanding administrators, professors, staff and supporters—the people who truly make the Corporate Residency MBA program what it is, and who often don’t get all the recognition they deserve.

Thanks to Christie’s efforts that Sunday, and the students who shared the idea in the first place, Dr. Nason arrived in class last Monday morning to a group of eager-to-learn look-alikes, not to mention a customized soundtrack (put together by fellow first-year MBA student Kareem Sobaih) with the words “Richard Nason” blasting over the loudspeakers. To the delight of the class, he was happy to oblige by dancing his way over to the podium to introduce that day’s quote and start his lecture.

Throughout the morning, other faculty such as Marketing professor Dan Shaw and Personal & Professional Effectiveness instructor (and Director of the Corporate Residency MBA program) Dr. Scott Comber came by to see all of the ‘little Nasons’ in their Halloween garb. Laughs were shared, and a few photographs were taken. All in all: thanks to the efforts of students like Christie, it was a much-needed occasion to relax for a moment and enjoy ‘the lighter side of the Dal MBA’.