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“It was like being in a desert, but with snow instead of sand,” recalls Rowe School of Business professor Dr. Jim Barker. “And like a desert, the more you look, the more beauty you see and the more fascinated you become. The buildings are all on pylons. The people have adapted. Water has to be brought in. There are amazing different forms of adaptation.”

Barker is speaking of Iqaluit, where he spent a few days in May to begin a project entitled “Program to Develop Government of Nunavut Leaders.” The project grew out of a request by Nunavut’s government for proposals on how to better equip their civil servants and leaders. “We were approached by the partners who put this proposal together, PGF Consultants and the Institute on Governance [IOG],” explains Martine Durier-Copp, Director of the Centre for Advanced Management Education and one of the project leads for Dalhousie. PGF and IOG, which work in leadership development, wanted an institutional partner to ensure the program’s educational quality, and because “they want to translate leadership development to graduate and undergraduate programs,” says Durier-Copp. PGF, IOG and the other partners submitted their proposal to the Government of Nunavut in November 2014, and learned a few months later that they had won the contract.

 “It’s a great point of prestige for us to be chosen,” says Barker. “Dalhousie’s primary role is to grant advanced standing towards some of our programs. We review the training programs to ensure that they are of a high academic standard, and offer a pathway into our Bachelor of Management and Master of Public Administration (Management) programs for students who have completed them.” Dalhousie will be working with the project leaders as well as three other partners: First People’s Group, which will focus on incorporating Inuit culture into the program, Lead Action, which will provide much of the actual training, and the Government of Nunavut’s Arctic College, which will also deliver training. The educational programs will be offered to three groups of varying seniority in the government; instructors will deliver management courses in short modules. Barker, with Management colleagues Dr. Robert Moody and Dr. Dan Tucker, will contribute to curricula and course development.

 “From the Government of Nunavut’s perspective, that means there is a very high standard of education,” explains Barker. From the Faculty of Management’s perspective, this is an opportunity to expand the Bachelor of Management program’s online delivery. At present, the MPA(M) is already available online, so graduates of the Nunavut program will be able to complete it long-distance. “It’s a matter of articulating pathways in a way that works for the Government of Nunavut and the participants,” says Barker. “This program also creates the opportunity for the Faculty of Management to build on existing collaborative agreements between Dalhousie and Arctic College.”

Nunavut’s government, he notes, has been extremely thoughtful about the program: “Just to get to the stage of accepting proposals was four years of work. They’ve researched and looked at what they need and want to accomplish.” Geography makes Nunavut a unique territory for government and civil service, and visiting Iqaluit was eye-opening for Barker. “I didn’t have an appreciation of Arctic Canada and its issues and its opportunities,” he says. “It was a great way for me to be educated about those.” Nunavut, he says, is dedicated to improving prosperity and health while maintaining a strong focus on Inuit culture. “It can’t just grow,” says Barker. “It has to be sustainable. Just like the water. Developing leadership in its employees is an essential way of doing that, and that’s what Dalhousie is participating in.” Through this project, the Faculty of Management is fulfilling part of its mandate for impact: “An essential part of the Faculty and of the Rowe School is our ability to transform, because of the impact we can have,” says Barker. “We have never been involved with a government on this level, but we’ve been selected to do so because of the quality of our programs and our reputation.” Durier-Copp, who is hoping to eventually include all four schools in the Faculty of Management, is enthusiastic about the project. “This is an incredible opportunity to help build the territory of Nunavut,” she says, “and to be a partner with them in a development project here in Canada.”