Pamela
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your brief background?
Pamela: I’m a nurse and I maintain my RN registration and I received my BN and my MN from the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Manitoba. Then I went for my PhD in the Department of Community Health Sciences faculty of Medicine at the UM and I looked at the effectiveness of community services for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and their caregivers. So, looking at basically home care services and other kinds of services that they tend to need but do they really meet the needs of people with dementia and their informal caregivers. And my research is still continuing in that area looking more at the supports in rural and remote areas for these caregivers and people with dementia as well as the adequacy of vision services for older adults and long-term care facilities.
Jacobsen: How did you find AU?
Pamela: Well, I was an Associate Dean at the University of Manitoba in the faculty of nursing as well as Associate Dean in the faculty of grad studies and I wanted to become a dean and so I was looking to see what opportunities there were and I saw that AU was advertising for the Dean of Grad Study. So, I thought I would apply. Of course, AU is very different from UM. UM, the traditional on sited Preston University and I wanted part of the attitude of one of those large universities, is that they feel that students need to come to them and that anyone who wants a postsecondary education in rural or remote areas should be relocating or traveling to the city for their education and then maybe go back to the rural areas if they want. So, I had started some online and blended courses at the faculty of nursing when I was associate dean because I saw most of the nurses were people who were employed, couldn’t leave their area where they had a family where they had their job and so then to make education more accessible and to increase the educational preparation of nurses out in rural areas, I felt that I needed to begin some type of online courses. So, AU was an online university, it looked really interesting and so I applied for the position and that was in 2008.
Jacobsen: What are your tasks and responsibilities with your current position?
Pamela: Well, there was no faculty of grad studies when I started. So, I was the very first Dean and it was the first faculty that was created. So, there was a lot of work just to begin initial guidelines. We had a number of Master’s programs and each of them developed on their own and had their own regulations and there were just two new doctor programs that were just starting that year and so part of the requirement from advanced education as well as from AU was that we need some kind of guidelines to look at who’s eligible to be a supervisor for doctoral students and Masters and committee members, what are their qualifications and what should be the requirements through the whole doctoral program. So, it’s almost like a quality management position to ensure that there are consistent standards for our grad students to provide similar needed resources for grad students, again across all of the university.
So, whether it’s webinars on how to use APA, how to write a proposal for a grant, or how to write an abstract for conference; part of it is to help build a community amongst the grad students. So, I started the first grad student conference which was about four years ago and since that time then FGS has co-hosted it. So, we’re equal partners in the planning of that. This year, we’re having just a virtual conference and encouraging students to apply. It’s all peer-reviewed and again part of it is to help develop their writing skills so that they have an abstract that they can submit to their own disciplinary; national and international conferences and many of these students have had their abstracts accepted after they’ve had them for our conference. So, I mean that’s a good feeling for them and a good feeling for me too that this is helping them to kind of build their career and disseminate their research.
So, the quality aspect of it, the creating a community, setting minimum standards, and then the individual faculties can have more stringent standards and trying to just advertise and promote AU across the other universities across Canada. So, I have been on the board for the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies to let them know what their standards rigor and what AU is about and I’m currently the president for the Western Deans of Grad Studies as well. So again, I think that helps with our reputation and getting it out there and that online courses are just as rigorous as in person.
Jacobsen: Looking ahead for the next, say 3 years, what are your hopes for AU?
Pamela: I would like to see a few more master’s programs, maybe some doctor programs. I would like to see supervisors maybe be a bit more effective in the supervision of students. So, maybe I have to kind of agree with that a little bit after this but we do hold workshops and webinars on effective supervision. So, students to be more aware of their expectations as a student and what to expect of the supervisor and just I hope that the students will apply and receive more national awards. We’re just entering that arena over the last two years and students will be more successful nationally and internationally.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time, Pamela.
Pamela: Okay, well thank you. That was short and easy.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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