Michelle Scott Is A True Champion For UNB Saint John’s International MBA Students
SAINT JOHN – Michelle Scott always knew she wanted to work with people.
As a Saint Johner who moved to Alberta during her university years, she realized quickly what she was truly meant to be doing.
“I worked in accounting in the oil industry for a while. I knew that wasn’t really where I wanted to be and I was more interested in working with people,” says Michelle. “I always had a great interest in people with different backgrounds. I was in Fort McMurray, which was a great place to meet people from all around the world.”
Michelle’s passion for working with people from different backgrounds stemmed from personal interest and desire to learn more about cultures different from her own.
“I grew up loving history and that morphed into learning more about different cultures and how the world interacts. When I was in my education programs, or in my different jobs, I would always seek out people who were different – whether it was culturally or other categories of diversity – and try to learn as much as I could,” she says.
“I just feel lucky that I was able to grow my job in that area to fulfill some of my own passions as well.”
Today, Michelle is the Program Administration and Student Development Officer for the University of New Brunswick’s MBA program, where every day she works with students from all around the world through both good and tough times.
“I help with academic and career advising. We do get into some personal stuff because it’s an incredibly stressful program. Anything bad that’s going to happen seems to happen during the MBA program,” Michelle says. “Students lose people in their lives, people get sick and they’re just under a lot of stress, so I help them to a certain extent, but usually I’m trying to help them find the services they need.”
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About 90 per cent of the students Michelle works with are international students. International students also face different challenges than students from the area. She works to link them with community programs and resources they need.
“There’s settlement issues and finding them a place to live that suits their needs. Some come with children and you need schooling,” says Scott. “There are all sorts of resources in the community to refer them to.”
Michelle’s hard work for UNB Saint John’s MBA students was recently recognized by PRUDE Inc. at its Diversity Champion Awards. The awards celebrate individuals, organizations and businesses who have proven to be inclusive leaders in our community.
“I had an MBA student working for Prude on their business consulting project. I was meeting with her and her supervisor and we were talking about providing different workshops on diversity to our students. They had tickets for the dinner and I said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll sponsor a table,'” says Scott.
“And as we were talking, my student said, ‘I want to nominate you’.”
Michelle didn’t expect to win, but she took home the Cultural Diversity Award for the Education and Heritage category.
“I was speechless. I was absolutely shocked,” says Michelle. “I was so pleased and proud of myself. It was just incredibly rewarding to be recognized by my students and the community.”
Michelle says fostering diversity and inclusion in New Brunswick’s post-secondary education is critical to the province’s future.
“We aren’t growing as a province. We have out-migration of young people and we’re not having babies. We really need economic development; the students at the level that I’m seeing come here and they want to work and stay in the community if they can find jobs – and many of them do. Some of them want to start businesses; some of them are fortunate enough to come with good resources behind them. I have a few students that have started businesses and hired people.”
The new decade has already brought in big things for UNB Saint John’s business faculty. Just last week the department officially unveiled its new home in uptown Saint John, a move that puts students in the heart of the city’s business community they hope to a part of.
“The reason why we moved up here is to really be in your face. For people to see us and know we exist. Even though we’re over 20-years-old as a full-time program, there are people who still don’t know we exist and there are employers who don’t know we exist,” says Michelle.
“We wanted the uptown to see us, to know that the students exist. To see all these mature, professional people going to the City Market for coffee and taking advantage of the businesses and the facilities that are uptown – enjoying the uptown and being here.”
This story was sponsored by the University of New Brunswick in Saint John.