Mary Wins Teaching Award

Just two weeks after receiving her Distinguished Woman Award from the YWCA, Mary has won the Management Student's Society's annual Teaching Award. The Award (complete with rather nice plaque) was presented at the annual Management Student Scholarship Banquet.

Mary hadn't wanted to go to the Banquet Thursday because she had had emergency wisdom tooth extraction Wednesday and still felt like someone was driving needles into her head--major painkillers notwithstanding--but one of the organizers insisted, so she dragged herself to it because, well, Mary is the type of prof who pushes herself to go out to support her students. So when her name was announced as this year's recipient of the Teaching Award, we understood why he had been so insistent!

I'm pretty proud of Mary. Nice to see her recognized for all the work she puts into her teaching...

Mary Runté Awarded Woman of Distinction

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Excerpted from the Feb 13, 2012 University of Lethbridge Notices Board:

The YWCA Women of Distinction Awards recognize outstanding women who live and work in Southern Alberta.

Through a competitive process, the honourees are chosen from a group of nominations. The awards are based on the candidate’s accomplishments, commitment and leadership.

The Women of Distinction Awards Ceremony is a wonderful venue to showcase the talent and leadership of women in Southern Alberta. Women honoured have been trailblazers, entrepreneurs, innovators, social advocates, and volunteers.

Mary Runte: Woman of Distinction in the Spirit of Women category.

Mary Runté has a Ph.D. in Management from St. Mary's University and an MBA from York. She is an Associate Professor of Strategy and the Director of Social Responsibility in the Faculty of Management at the University of Lethbridge.

Previously, Mary worked with a variety of nonprofit organizations, including Eastside Young Moms and the Society of Special Needs Adoptive Parents (SNAP). Gender inequity, work-family balance, social responsibility and business ethics are her particular areas of interest and research, having numerous publications and having received major research grants to study these issues.

Mary was honoured as distinguished speaker for the Work-Life Conference at the University of Ochanamizu, Tokyo, Japan in 2007. She is the founding Division Chair for the Social Responsibility Interest Group of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada.

Her tireless support of her students, especially female students in non-traditional fields, and her one-on-one mentoring throughout their academic careers is done on a volunteer basis. She is an incredible role model for students and colleagues alike as she advocates ceaselessly for ethical and principled business behaviour.

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From the Lethbridge Hearld, Monday, Feb 13, 2012.:

Runté credits her daughters as her inspiration to connect with other women.
"They are very different, unique souls, and to just be able to see that and to recognize that is one of the greatest honours I have in life; to be able to nurture that and allow it to grow without interference, but with support," she said. "And I say that with my students as well. Male and female, sometimes what they need is just to be noticed."

Runte is known for tirelessly supporting her pupils, particularly female students studying non-traditional fields, as well as her volunteer one-on-one mentoring.
"It's really validating when people notice something that you do simply because it's what you do," she said of winning the award.

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I am incredibly proud of Mary. I of course was aware of the impact she was having before the award, but it's nice to see her get some recognition for the work that she does.

Portrait of Her Mom

Kasia's (age 7) portrait of her mom for Mother's Day.

Mary appointed Director Social Responsibility

Monday saw the official announcement of Mary's appointment as Director of Social Responsibility and Not-for-Profit programs, for the Management Faculty at the UofL. She's been doing a lot of the ground work off the corner of her desk for the last couple of years to develop these two areas within the Faculty, so it is nice to see her not only being acknowledged for these efforts, but that the Faculty agrees that these are important foci for any Management Faculty these days, and is developing the structures necessary to support them.

It has been fascinating to watch how the management field has changed over the last decade. When Mary and I started attending the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Conference ten years ago, there was no division within the ASAC for Social Responsibility; Mary had to found it. It became the fastest growing division, and is now (I believe) the largest division with the ASAC. (Mary was honoured with an ASAC Service Award for her efforts in founding and Chairing the division.) Similarly, ten years ago I could count on my fingers the number of Universities that had courses, let alone majors or minors, in CSR. Now, I'd estimate that the majority do -- including UofL.

Similarly, I remember the reaction way back when Mary started her MBA and went to York because she wanted to specialize in Ethics, and it was one of the few management programs with any ethics component -- her peers would ask her, "why would you want to study ethics? What has that got to do with business?" It was astounding to me how often she was asked that throughout her MBA and PhD programs -- and so a lot less astounding for me when various business scandals broke, e.g., Enron, or the more recent collapse of the American financial system and subsequent world recession. Well, gee, maybe corporate social responsibility deserves a little more prominence in faculties of management!

But we are seeing that change... CSR has become a more significant part of management training.

Now, if they would just get the message that the NonProfit sector is huge, growing, and in need of better, more broadly trained managers...I think we're beginning to see the realization that management training is about developing leadership rather than strictly staffing the for-profit sector. It will be interesting to see where that goes in the next ten years.

Of course, the one drawback with Mary's promotion is that she now outranks me! Fortunately, I'm in another faculty so I can pretend that I too am a leading faculty member in my own sphere-- though recently I've begun to suspect that when my colleagues refer to me as 'a senior faculty member' they are referring to my age rather than my influence....

Social Responsibility

Several years ago, Mary put a fair bit of effort into founding the Social Responsibility Division within the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada. Frankly, I had been surprised that such a thing hadn't already existed, but the truth is that business ethics has always been a relatively minor academic interest until the series of scandals that followed de-regulation under Reagan, such as the Enron debacle. Of course, with the recent near collapse of the banking and insurance industries, headlines about auto maker bailouts, and so on, the need for greater emphasis on social responsibility has become pretty obvious. Anyway, a number of colleagues told Mary she was foolish to devote so much time and energy to what's called 'service' in academia -- that is, spending time organizing conference streams and advocating for social responsibility to be recognized as a key specialization within the discipline -- when what counts for tenure is teaching and above all, research. But Mary was able to produce more quality research than almost anyone I know, retain her reputation as a top teacher, and still found and chair the new division. Sometimes, when you believe in something as strongly as Mary does, you just have to do it, whether there is any career payoff or not.

So, it was nice to learn that others recognize her contribution to the field: she's just found out that she is going to get a Service Award from the Social Responsibility Division of the ASAC at this year's conference. Almost restores my faith in academia.

Mary Runte -- Associate Professor

So my wife, Mary Runté received Tenure and promotion to Associate Professor today. The committee met, I am reliably informed, for about six minutes -- three of those spent introducing the External, and going through the paperwork, so not a lot of debate over whether she had made the bar for either tenure or Associate. The comments from all the external reviewers were basically rave reviews without a single reservation (something almost unheard of!), and the fast turn around in the meeting was another form of validation, so Mary's feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I always knew that she was a slam dunk to get tenure and promotion, even given the occasional nonsense politics that interfere with the process in some departments/faculties, but its always nerve wracking until its official.

Dolphins Again

Strictly speaking, that's a Walphin that Tigana is dancing with: a dolphin -killer whale cross. But Kasia had so much fun kissing a dolphin on our first trip to Hawaii, we decided that the rest of us should try it.

The root problem

The original plan had been for me to spend ten or twelve days in Edmonton on my own, clearing out Doug's place, etc., but Mary's tooth suddenly went south, and she had to bring the kids up a couple of days early and have me look after them while she went to the dentist. Five times, as it turned out.

After her initial consultation with an emergency dental clinic (something Lethbridge is not large enough to have) in Edmonton, Mary was told she needed a root canal. Although in theory Edmonton's larger population meant a better chance of getting in to see a specialist, in point of fact endontists were all booking months into the future -- which is fairly pointless if you need a root canal, since It's not the sort or level of pain one can easily ignore. Mary held out as long as she could, but ended up in the UofA Hospital's emergency clinic; and then our Lethbridge dentist recommended a colleague in Edmonton who worked Mary in.

We were very impressed by this new dentist immediately, and greatly relieved that he was indeed an endontist when we had all but given up seeing a specialist. He did the root canal, loaded Mary up with heavy-duty drugs to stop the swelling and pain, and we waited for her to get better. Only the dentist phoned back the next day to say that he'd found an extra root on the x-rays, and would have to open her up again. So, it was back to the dentist again. And then, a fifth time, later in the week.

The root problem (sorry about the pun) is that Mary is a mutant: one to two extra roots per tooth. So rather than routine root canals -- no fun at the best of times -- Mary's are always much more complicated and therefore painful affairs. It was only after her third visit to the specialist (and again, I emphasize that he struck us as extremely competent, thorough, and caring) that she finally had any resolution, though the tooth remained tender for days after even then.

Mary Featured in Lethbridge Herald

Photo by David Rossiter

Mary was the feature interview on the cover of the Careers Section of the Lethbridge Herald today... The headline was "Are You a Workaholic"; story was by Dave Mabell. It's currently on-line full text at the Herald site, if you care to read it, and if it is still up when you read this post.

Mary was reasonably pleased with how it turned out, felt the reporter was professional and competent. One is always a little nervous how the press is going to report something one is involved in, but this came out more or less intact. (Mary felt the punchline was missing -- that the last line of the story quoting Tigana missed that 'this was a bad thing'. But close enough.)

Gotcha!

Having Slept in sich on Saturday, Sunday was my turn to get up with the kids.

Tigana and Kasia played together nicely, Kasia now being old enough and articulate enough to take part in Tigana's elaborate role plays. At one point Tigana pulled out her kid friendly makeup kit and drew crowns on herself and Kasia's forehead. Tigana's artistic efforts weren't half bad in creating reasonably believable crowns, once I had verified that the makeup came off with just water. As Tigana wandered off to watch TV, Kasia came over to me and proceeded to draw a crown on my forehead.

Kasia worked at her artistic creation for a long time -- maybe fifteen minutes -- taking meticulous care to get everything just so, switching back and forth between the various shades of purple and pink available in the kit. Being semi-comatose, I was happy just to have her somewhere I could see her, so we were both happy with the activity. Eventually, I went over to the mirror to see what my crown looked like.

Okay, let's be real here: my three year old's artistic endeaver's in no way resembled a crown -- what I had on my forehead was a four inch multicolored bruise.

Hmmm, I think. I enlist Tigana's aid to run and tell Mom (waiting for sounds of activity so as not to actually wake her up for this) that Dad had walked into the downstairs pillar while carrying Kasia. (I will confess here to a reputation for a certain level of klutziness that makes such a claim altogether too believable.) Tigana is keyed to say that she thinks I should go to the Doctor but that I refused to wake Mom.

When Mary comes down to start making brunch, she takes one look at my forehead and freaks. "Oh my god, your head!"

Gotcha! April Fool's!

Mary concedes that for the first time ever, I have managed to 'get her' on April Fool's.

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My favorite April Fool's was when the Discovery Channel got me. Back before Mary and the kids, the days sort of drifted into one another and I remember getting up and turning on TV while I made breakfast, and being distracted by a documentary that explained why the Earth was really flat. Round to be sure, but flat. Various experts explained the evidence that proved the earth was flat, why the pictures of Earth as a sphere were an optical illusion, and why the widespread belief that the Earth was a sphere was a conspiracy and ignorant superstition.

Considerably upset that the Discovery would give equal time to this Creationist-style nonsense, I sat down to write a letter/email of protest. Deciding to get the specific details right, I noted the time, 10:30 AM, and the Date, April First, and then wrote about half a line before the April First part penetrated. D'oh!

But it was a brilliant hoax! Completely deadpan documentary, and no commentary by announcers before or after. I wonder how many people were taken in, if just for a moment....

Fire on UofL grounds

Fire as seen from my wife's office window

This one is from my wife's cell phone, taken about a month back when there was a fire on the grounds next to my wife's office. About the time she snapped this photo it occured to her that the fire was also moving towards the parking lot, and ours was one of the half dozen cars in the stalls right by the front doors. She ran out and moved the car; we came back later and found the the burn line had come within about 20 feet of where we park.

But no harm done in the end, partly because one of the campus security staff stood between the fire and the building with a fire extinguisher. Not sure that holding off a grass fire that way is exactly my idea of a safe job.

Mary's article in Human Relations

And in other news, Mary's article "Cold War, chilly climate: Exploring the roots of gendered discourse in organization and management theory" in volume 59 #5 of Human Relations, pages 695-720 is available on the web from Sage. It is essentially one chapter from her dissertation, so gives one a good feel for what she has been doing with her life these last couple of years. (I mean, besides raising a family and holding down a full time teaching position here at the UofL.)

Photoblog

Since getting a camera phone in February, I've taken a few more spontaneous shots than one would have in the old days of having to lug a camera around. One always has one's cell, so one ends up getting more of those Kodak moments... though, admittedly, the quality is closer to the old box cameras than to a typical digital camera....

Anyway, here are a few of better shots I finally got around to downloading....

Tigana in local playground.

Tigana Studying

Kasia and Mom

Runte Family Portrait

Top: Tigana (age 7), Robert

Bottom: Mary, Kasia (age 2)

This and That

Not a lot to report lately, just nose to the grindstone kind of month. Mary got sick with a bad cold (the kind that puts you into bed) at the start of the semester, but I managed to escape relatively symptom free, thanks to copious amounts of ColdFX. The stuff does seem to work; I did get the cold, but too mild a version to really notice. Two more viruses have passed through the house since, and each time I seem to have gotten off scott free, whereas Mary has been suffering.

The date for Mary’s dissertation defense has been set for the morning of November 10th. She will have to fly out to Halifax the day before, and back the following morning, leaving me with Kasia for two nights for the first time without nursing at night before bedtime. We’ll see how this goes. Kasia is certainly old enough to be weaned, but there is a certain irony in weaning one’s daughter in order to present a dissertation on the importance of not letting one’s career interfere with childrearing…. But I think Kasia and I will manage okay for two days and then back to the current routine. Oddly, Kasia has become more interested in nursing the older she gets.

Kasia

Kasia is a strange kid. She hardly ever speaks, beyond ‘Daddy’, ‘Mommy’, ‘Gana’ (for Tigana), puppy’, ‘duck’, and a few other animals. (Mary was taking Kasia through an animal picture book and she correctly identified ‘cow’, ‘puppy’, ‘duck’, etc., but when we got to the pig, Kasia identified it as an “E-I-E-I-O”.) But the thing is, she can speak when motivated to do so. Like, she was in the bathtub the other night and whining inarticulately, pointing at I-didn’t-know-what and making the “gimme” sign with her hand, when I finally said in frustration, “I don’t know what you want, Kasia. Just tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.” And clear as a bell, albeit in an exasperated tone, she says, “Give me the towel, Dad.” I look at her astonished. “That was a five word sentence! Since when can you talk in sentences?” “Towel!” she demands again. I give her the towel, muttering. “I didn’t even know you knew what a ‘towel’ was…”

This sort of thing happens all the time. She will look her mom, and say something perfectly clearly like, “I love you mamma!” and yet when Mary rushes with Kasia to show me what she can say, she will completely clam up. It’s as if, having said something once, she is now done with that sentence, and looking to move on to new pastures, will never say it again. So when we come to the health care nurse who wants to assess Kasia’s language skills, and the nurse asks, “how many words does she say?” we’re at a bit of loss. We’ve heard her use over 50 different words, but like “towel” only the once, and never in front of witnesses. Kasia will certainly not say anything to said nurse. We see other kids Kasia’s age blathering away -- and Tigana at this age was accepting legal briefs from other kids at Montessori to plead their cases with their parents -- yet Kasia will never speak if a gesture will communicate her needs. We’re beginning to suspect that she is just really lazy, and have started to insist on her verbalizing. “No, Kasia, you are not getting out of the high chair until you say ‘up’, not just hold your arms up and whine.” Seems to be working a bit, but the contrast with Tigana at this age is pretty profound.

On the other hand, Kasia is amazingly persistent and a clever tool user. If I take something away from her, she will keep after until she gets it again. When Tigana was this age, it was easy to distract her from something dangerous by giving her something else interesting. Not Kasia. I put a dangerous toy out of reach on top of the dresser in her room, and over a period of days, she kept bringing things into her room until she had gathered sufficient materials to build a ladder to climb up and get it. That persistence impresses me almost as much it terrifies me that nothing is safe from her little tool using brain…

Lately, Kasia has adopted the habit of bringing me dead bugs, and proudly depositing them in my open hand. “Dead bug!” she will say excitedly. I’m never sure how to react to this sort of thing. On the one hand, there is the hygienically-responsible-parent in me who wants to say “Ugh! Dead bug! Dirty!” so she will stop picking up dead bugs; on the other hand, there is the parent-as-educator who thinks I should be encouraging her obvious interest in entomology by dissecting the cadaver. Tough call!

Tigana

Tigana got her ears pierced over the Thanksgiving Weekend. We had previously agreed that she could have her ears done when she turned 10, but we couldn’t take her asking us “How much does it hurt to have your ears pierced?” one more time. “It’s three years away”, we would say, “Why are you asking us this now?” But it had become some kind of obsession, where she felt she apparently needed the whole three years to psych herself up for it. The deciding factor, however, was when her best friend Zoe broke her arm on Friday, and Zoe’s mother related to us how her younger sister, Maya, was so envious of Zoe’s cast she tried to break her own arm so she could get one like her older sister. Mary did the calculations, and realized that if we waited until Tigana was 10 to get earrings, Kasia would be 4 &1/2 and would demand earrings too, whereas if we did it now, Kasia would be too young for it to register, and by the time she was old enough to ask for earrings, we could relate the precedent was you had to wait until Thanksgiving when you’re seven….

Tigana reading bedtime story to Kasia

More Flowers

Mary is (a) sick, and (b) struggling to finish the final draft of her dissertation for Friday, so I once again felt she deserved some flowers, so back to Fraches for another 'ice cream'!

Your love better than Ice Cream

Given the week we've had, I figured Mary could use some flowers.



These are from Fraches, a local florist I like to patronize because they have a refreshing creative streak -- for important occasions I like Mary to know her flowers aren't just a bunch I picked up at Safeway or Costco along with the groceries. Usually, though, I have to special order a week or more ahead, since the Lethbridge market tends towards the conservative, so walking in off the street I don't usually see anything I like. (They love when I come in because they know they get to do something really different. I now generally trust them to do something eye catching, so I just say, 'give me something different in X price range', and stand back. For Mary's 40th I they delivered a spectacular arrangement featuring limes to the restaurant where we went for dinner. Everyone in the place kept looking at the arrangement because it was fabulous, and because, did I mention the limes? The two strangest were private jokes back when I was dating Mary, where I had them do an arrangement out of broccoli and another one out of doggie biscuits.) And usually Tigana and I have to do a fair bit of negotiating when we go to get something for Mom, as Tigana's tastes run to colorful rather than, um, strange sophisticated. But when we saw this one in the display case, we both agreed instantly that this one was the one! Tigana burst out laughing the second she saw it, and I knew we had to have it. Exactly what the week called for....

The Feminist Mystique for the 21th Century

WhoooHooo!

Mary had submitted her draft dissertation to her advisor last month, and been waiting on pins and needles to see how extensive the revisions required by her advisor would be. To her (and my) great relief, his suggestions have been very very minor clarifications. Instead, he has been exceedingly positive about the work, saying in part:

"This is wonderful stuff. I think that you have a book on your hands (post defence). It reads so well. I laughed my way through chapter 3 -- black comedy, but funny nonetheless. You tell a great (and intellectually sharp) story. ... What you have done with anecdotes was sheer poetry as well inspired."

And again on another chapter: "Simply brilliant."

Re, methodology chapter: "You should be teaching critical methods, you are so good at it. "

"I really enjoyed this. I see it as ready."

And my personal favorite:

"When the book is published and, hopefully, they ask me for a comment (or anyone else for that matter) I/they will call it the feminist mystique for the 21th century."

I knew the dissertation was great when she sent it off, but it is really validating to have her advisor be so enthusastic too. Considering how fast Mary did this work, and that she did it while having a baby and teaching full time and that she did it entirely on her own (with the exception of one chapter that was the basis for an article in Human Relations, this is the first time her advisor has seen any of it.)

And, she is still a major babe!

Toy and Dissertation

My wife gave me a new toy for Father's day... a swiss army knife with a 64 meg data chip as one of the attachments!

This is amazingly cool. In the one "knife" I have a knife blade, a screwdriver, a pair of sissors, a nail file, a flashlight, a pen, and the USB 64 meg memory. It is way cool! And I am literally the first on my block to get one, since Mary had to import it from the UK (took only a week) as it is not available in Canada yet.

I got my Father's day gift several days early because I actually needed the 64 megs to facilitate transfer of the files Mary and I were working on last week: her dissertation. (I was helping her copy edit her first complete draft, due Friday June 16. No one can find the typos in their own writing, and I was glad to do it as it was the first time I had read the dissertation through from start to finish, though I have seen the various bits regularly over the last several years. But finally assembling everything into one complete draft gives a very different impression....!) When we printed out the hardcopy and put it into a binder, we were very gratified by its bulk -- it really felt like a book. At 250 pages (and that doesn't count the references, probably another 30-40 pages) it is a nice size for a doctoral dissertation.

I am obviously biased, but I think Mary's dissertation one of the very best I've ever read -- its of publishable quality, IMHO. And in the opinion of a bunch of editors and referees too, because she has already published 2 chapters of it in significant journals, and is sending out two more in the next couple of weeks. It is very very good stuff.

I am a little in awe of my wife's scholarship, both in comparison to the light weight stuff I've been grinding out lately on cyberculture (I think her stuff matters and has the potential to revolutionize her discipline, if her positivist male colleagues can put aside their ideological prejudices long enough to read it -- she actually got heckled at one conference by a group of 60 year old men who did not like her critique of their work, though all the women scholars in the audience subsequently came up to her and apologized for their behavior....), and that, well, that I got to marry her.... I mean, somehow you expect great scholars to be out there somewhere, probably at Harvard or Standford or, at least Queens, not lying next to you in bed. It's like one of those K-Tel commercials: "How much would you pay for this product? But wait, there's more!" Not only is Mary incredibly good looking (initial motivation for interaction) and willing to put up with me (astounding! ) but I find out a few weeks into the relationship that she is a fabulous cook and then a few years in she turns out to be a great mom to my kids (who knows this or even thinks of it as a criteria in the early days of a relationship?) and then I find out that on top of all that she is a significant scholar too. I'm telling you, it just doesn't get better than this!

I just wish I could go back in time to visit myself in my twenties and tell myself to relax, it all works out in the end. Because at the time, I was very envious of all my friends who seemed to be having much better luck then me....Turns out, I wasn't mistaken to wait until I got exactly what I wanted..... though of course, I have to admit in the end, I just lucked out....