Camosun Story #102: Steve

Steve is a faculty member and chair of Camosun’s Management & HR Leadership program. “I am a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and have worked in hotels and hospitality for many years. While I liked my job, something was missing, and I was curious about what else was out there for me. Then, one of my CPA friends who also worked at Royal Roads University (RRU) asked if I had ever considered teaching. So, I started teaching online classes as a term faculty member at RRU and loved it. Eventually, I reached out to the accounting program chair at Camosun and asked if they were looking for instructors, but at the time, I was working during the day when they needed people. Then, in 2011, I quit my day job and called up the chair again, who said that they would love to have me on the team.”

Steve has taught several different courses over the years. “I’ve taught financial accounting course, three levels of managerial accounting, food and beverage cost controls, and strategy courses, which is what I’m teaching now in addition to my role as chair.” I asked him what he enjoyed most about teaching. “I like seeing the spark in people, and when students tell me they liked the way I ran the class or supported them to feel safe and engaged within the classroom. I also like seeing where the students go afterwards and when I see requests through LinkedIn for a reference. I love that I’ve helped meaningfully change someone’s life.”

I asked Steve what being the department chair was like for him. “Before I was chair, I was a program leader in Hospitality Management, working closely with students and their program and career planning. During that time, I had an excellent relationship with the hospitality chair, who was my mentor and coach. Then, the chair role in the MHRL program was posted during the pandemic. Some people view being a chair as a punishment or a rite of passage, but I don’t see it that way. As chair, you interact with term faculty members and are a point of contact for everyone in the department. I believe in servant leadership where I help the people around me.”

I asked Steve how he supports term and continuing faculty in his chair role. “Regarding term faculty, I remember what it’s like not to know how to turn on classroom projectors or what key gets you into your office. I wondered how we as a department could show term faculty the proper care when they start here and if we could formalize this process. One of our fantastic program leaders developed an orientation session. Even if it’s only one hour before term starts, it could be the most productive hour they spend before starting to teach. And part of what we want is to hear those term faculty say that this is a place they’d love to work at full time.”

As for Continuing faculty, Steve works to engage with faculty and support them to feel secure in their jobs. “I want to ensure they have the right tools and feel respected and engaged in their work. I schedule one-on-one time with each of my 16 faculty members every month, although sometimes people are too busy marking or on vacation or Scheduled Development. During this time, we talk about schedules, what’s happening in the classrooms, and solutions to issues like the number of academic integrity violations we see. I like to connect with people and understand their personal lives and how to support them when things don’t always go according to plan. Part of what I want to do is empathize – not necessarily solve their problems but just offer an empathetic ear. Kindness is appreciated, and I also try to be transparent. For example, I’ll ask them if there are any courses they don’t want to teach anymore or a course they would like to teach because one of the most vulnerable things an instructor can say is that they would like to teach a course someone else has been teaching for a long time. Then, I can try to support those requests. Sometimes, I know it will be a tough conversation because people can become attached to the courses they teach, but other times, an instructor will want to try something new. I’m also very aware that the chair role is a peer leadership role, and I always try to approach the job with humility, knowing that I work with a talented team.”

I appreciated how Steve builds community in his department and how he supports building relationships and community in his classrooms. “I like a loud classroom. For me, if you can hear a pin drop, that isn’t a good thing. When I can see relationships forming and ideas getting kicked around, that gets my heart going. I set my classes up in the spirit of team-based learning (TBL), organizing students into groups of five and ensuring teammates have room for discussion with each other. I also consider students’ attention span, so I only talk for 15 minutes before having them do something else. For example, after I’ve talked, I’ll pose a larger topic to the class for discussion. They then must agree on an answer as a team and share their conclusions with the larger class. The door is open for other groups to agree or disagree. I’ve always said during the course you’re allowed to change your mind if you have a good reason to – we are not working in absolutes.”

Steve splits assessments between teamwork and individual work. “For individual work, there are reflective pieces and engagement assessments where students interact with other students. When it comes to group projects, I’ll explain that working as part of a team means doing things equitably, not equally, that I’ve been part of some wonderful teams, but I’ve been part of some disasters, and that the same thing will apply in whatever job they land. Along the way, I’ll ask them to consider their strengths and skills and think about how they can use and develop these skills. Then we discuss what lessons we learn if a team crashes and burns – what could have been done differently? And what each student’s responsibility is. Remember that leadership isn’t limited to only one person. Leadership is a collective responsibility.”

During our conversation about teamwork, Steve mentioned that his students work with business entrepreneurs to present suggestions and recommendations for those businesses. I was curious to learn more about how this worked in his course. “I used to ask students to pick a business for us to analyze, such as West Air Canada, Starbucks, Apple, Visa, etc. But last term, I decided to pick a couple of local businesses. I picked a local yoga studio and a local brewery but advised students that to come up with recommendations, they had to understand the businesses and their owners. This time, we ran the presentations as a seminar. I sat on the side, and one part of the assessment was to show that they understood the theory behind their recommendations. This first time around, I didn’t invite the entrepreneurs back for the final presentations, but I may do that in the future.”

Steve is never content with his teaching but continually pushes himself as a teacher. “I realized I wouldn’t be any good at teaching if I didn’t invest the time to improve my practice. I feel sharpest when I study. After I completed the Camosun/SFU Masters Program, one of my professors encouraged me to complete a doctorate. I study for the love and curiosity of it. After analyzing different programs, I decided on Western University’s Doctor of Education program. It’s all online and largely asynchronous, and you could focus on a social problem you want to solve. Steve was accepted into the program in 2021 and began a new learning journey. “The program’s point is to reflect on your ideals and ask yourself if you are living them. I started thinking about things I like doing, like volunteering at Our Place, where you work with less fortunate people, which I found tied into my studies as I read and changed perspectives. Ultimately, you have to understand the problem you are trying to solve, so while I wanted to write about the BBA program for my coursework, my professors asked, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve?” Steve realized that the BBA program was not the problem he wanted to write about and had to let that go. “That was hard, and I wondered what to do. Then, in one course, I started to explore faculty engagement and thought there was something there to start with.” So, Steve tucked away bits and pieces that struck him in each class. He didn’t know how to put them together but knew they would eventually play a part.

“Along the way, I started thinking about collegiality, the alignment of collegiality with engagement, and how groups rally as a team. Then we explored different change management frameworks, and finally, through that curiosity and exploration, I found a place to land for my dissertation: supporting people through collegiality and engagement and providing opportunities for whoever wants to be a part of them.” This reminded Steve of the PhD dissertation written by Martha McAlister in CETL, so he chatted with Martha and other people he held in high regard to help him flesh out his ideas. “I realized that if people can find meaning and purpose in their actions, they’ll be more engaged around it.” After successfully defending his dissertation (Stimulating Faculty Participation in Supporting and Developing Change Initiatives), Steve thought he should do something with it. “I started organizing my thoughts around grassroots leadership, collegiality, the idea that we’re not helpless, and I remembered Martha saying, ‘go with the power of yes,’ and ‘if you have two people who agree with you, your movement will start with those two people.’ I floated my ideas at a department meeting, explaining that I thought we needed to do more work with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the principles for responsible management in our classrooms, and several faculty members agreed. And here we are.”

As we ended an incredible conversation, I asked Steve for his advice for new faculty coming to teach at Camosun. “I’ve learned that there’s no shame in asking for help. When I started, I had an awesome chair, and she said, ‘You know the great difference between this job and other jobs? When you have a terrible day here or teach a class that goes wrong, you don’t have to relive it every day.’ Sometimes, a class will fall flat, but what did you learn from that? What can you do differently tomorrow? And if a faculty member thinks they messed up, I say, things happen – let’s talk about how to keep that from happening again and learn from it. Sometimes just creating these opportunities to share makes all the difference, especially for people who may not know where to seek help.”