News

Monday, July 16, 2:00 pm
Room 1020, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building
6100 University Avenue, Halifax 

RSVP: ermgmt@dal.ca or (902) 494-2582

You are invited to a celebration honouring the life and career of Professor Sunny Marche, who passed away June 8, 2012, at the age of 64. Alumni, faculty, friends, colleagues, and family will gather to pay tribute to a remarkable individual missed so dearly by all who knew him.

IN MEMORIAM

It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that Dr. Sunny Marche, a beloved member of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management for over 10 years, passed away suddenly in Toronto on Friday, June 8, as a result of a pulmonary embolism. He was 64.

Dr. Marche was born in Winnipeg, and trained as a fighter pilot before working in Edmonton as a teacher and certified management consultant. (He liked to joke that he was the only faculty member to have attempted to land an aircraft with the landing gear in the upright and locked position; the damage was limited to a large, young and resilient ego.) Mid-career, at the age of 38, he switched paths and completed his PhD at the London School of Economics.

When he arrived Dalhousie, Dr. Marche quickly became a highly respected and productive member of the Faculty of Manage­ment. His wealth of experience has always been an asset to his colleagues and to our students. A passionate teacher, he was the inaugural winner of Dalhousie’s A. Gordon Archibald Award for Teaching Excellence, received three MBA Professor of the Year Awards (2002, 2003, 2005) and also won the Teaching Excellence Award in Management Education, the Faculty of Management’s top teaching award, in 2007.

Dr. Marche’s love of teaching went well beyond the classroom. He was always ready to mentor and advise students and his junior colleagues. He was the co-founder of the interview competition, a highly creative endeavour that helped students from across Atlantic Canada understand the complexities of good interviewing skills. He taught at the graduate, undergraduate, and executive levels, demonstrating his broad communication repertoire. His commitment to the Faculty extended through his consulting work with us, which ranged from fundraising to strategic planning. And he was a productive researcher, with a steady stream of journal publications and conference papers in a wide range of topic areas, focusing particularly on knowledge management in large organizations.

His taste for interdisciplinary learning and research meant that his impact stretched well beyond the Faculty of Management. He played a key role in Dalhousie’s successful Interdisciplinary PhD program. He was instrumental in creating the Masters of E-Commerce and Executive E-Commerce programs, collaborations between Computer Science, Law, Medicine and Management. And when he became Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, he brought postdocs under the Grad Studies banner and launched an inaugural program for them to develop professional skills – the first such program in Canada.

Dr. Marche was creative, collegial and well-read. His passions outside of work included classical guitar, bird watching and Buddhism. Two years ago, in fact, he completed the 88-temple Shikoku Pilgrimage in Japan, a walk of more than 1,100 km.

He was a remarkable individual, and his absence will be felt across the university.

Dr. Marche is survived by his wife, Janet, sons Stephen and Michael, and grandchildren Elijah and Aviva. Donations in his name can be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada.

Peggy Cunningham

Dean, Faculty of Management