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Managers head back to school

Part-time course allows up-and-comers to upgrade their skills without leaving their jobs

MIRIAM HILL

For two days each month Terry Audla goes back to school. The executive director of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association has some post-secondary education, but earlier in life he chose to leave school and earn money rather than complete the course he was taking.

Audla is one of 30 managers and potential managers from a variety of Inuit organizations and private sector companies enrolled in the Nunavut Advanced Management Diploma, a course coordinated by the Kakivak Association and St. Mary’s University. The idea is to allow people already employed the chance to upgrade their skills without leaving their job.

On the first Thursday and Friday of each month, the students meet in Iqaluit and are introduced to a professor brought in from St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia who will teach the "module." The fifth module will take place this month.

On Thursday morning, the students review the theory and what the main principles are within any given area, Audla explained. Then there is a discussion before the students are broken into groups to work on case studies.

For example, he said, in the strategic management module, students looked at different organizational management styles and other factors to be taken into account, such as management styles, content control, and organizational structure. They looked at small businesses, how they were started and how they became successful.

"One module, when it came to structural and strategic planning I’ve actually put it into practice," Audla said. "I sat down with the staff here at QIA and went over the principles of what was taught."

An assignment was given to look at the structure of QIA, he said, but that just scratched the surface. He took the beginning and brought it back to his co-workers.

Eva Michael, assistant director of communications for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., hopes to move into the director’s position. She, too, has put what she’s learned into practice.

"Some of the things we discuss on a monthly basis just fall right into place at work," she said. Some NTI employees were recently in Winnipeg for a strategic management session, discussing things she had just studied.

"The process of going through things like this is just a matter of getting to work on it," she said.

Brian McLeod, president and CEO of Kakivak, said the diploma program, which started in January, was a trial session, with the goal of establishing a peer support network for Inuit managers and upgrading skills without losing managers in the workforce.

"We wanted to see what kind of response there would be and how well people could handle the course material," he said. "We just wanted to give it a go and see what happened because we had no idea how it would turn out."

Most participants in the course do not pay for the training thanks to assistance from Kakivak, INAC, the Nunavut implementation training committee, HRDC and Canadian North.

Two students come in from Rankin for the modules, but most are based in Iqaluit. Students are awarded a certificate for each module they finish and if they complete eight out of the 10 modules, they are granted a Diploma in Advanced Management from St. Mary’s, which can be put toward an executive Masters degree in business administration.

McLeod explained the university would waive a degree requirement if an applicant has received the advanced management diploma and does sufficiently well on the entrance exam.

"One of the reasons we wanted to do this was because we really thought there should be an intermediate step for people interested in the MBA program to see whether this kind of stuff is for them and also to get them warmed up to a lot of the topics," he said. But the primary focus of the program is to give people practical managerial skills "on the run."

To take a similar program at Nunavut Arctic College, an employed person would have to leave his or her job or take a leave of absence.

Both Audla and Michael (a mother of three) point to that as a reason the Kakivak program works well for them.

"It would be nice if I could go out for three months," Audla said, "but it would sure be a little more taxing."

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