Dr. Arshad Ahmad

Abstract:
Change management in the research-teaching-praxis nexus: Lessons from Canada & Pakistan

Vice Chancellor
LUMS – Lahore University of Management Sciences
Lahore, Pakistan

Opening Keynote Tuesday 29 Oct.
 

Prior to his current role as Vice-Chancellor of LUMS university, Dr. Ahmad served as Vice-Provost, Teaching & Learning McMaster University in Canada and Director of the Macpherson Institute. He is also Chair of Teaching and Learning Canada, past President of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and past Vice President of the International Consortium of Educational Developers. Dr. Ahmad completed his MBA and PhD in educational psychology at McGill university, Canada, received a lifetime 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 1992 and was a professor of finance at Concordia University and McMaster University. His current research interests are in student evaluations of teaching, approaches to teaching, teaching philosophies and student partnerships. For more information please see VC’s homepage; view of LUMS and other brief talks.

Title 
Change management in the research-teaching-praxis nexus:
Lessons from Canada & Pakistan

Abstract
Senior Administrators are obsessed by change management and often trapped by power-distance issues with faculty. But do they have to be? Their stories are often revealed in case studies that provide insights from managerial, socio-cultural and other perspectives (see for eg. Bamber et. al, 2009 and Kezar, 2014). My 5 years of bold experiments as Vice-Provost for Teaching & Learning of a top Canadian research-intensive university offer sobering lessons as well as traces of visible high-impact practices. As Vice-Chancellor of a top comprehensive, learning-centered university in Pakistan, the windows of change appear to be bigger and the potential impact factors higher. Can that be explained by vastly different institutional, cultural and demographic profiles? What about faculty and student dispositions, as well as disciplinary perspectives? Or, should we use a different theory of change? This keynote describes an exploration of a comparative research-teaching-praxis nexus in a relatively old compared to a young university and invites you to identify your own assumptions about processes that accelerate change and redistribute power through decisions that make a difference in the student experience.