Fiona Edgar
Lecturer
Management
Human resource management has a human face at Otago University.
What may sound an intimidating subject is in fact nestled in the social sciences, where it naturally follows that there is a "people-centred approach," says School of Business lecturer Dr Fiona Edgar. After all, when teaching topics such as human resource management, how better to practise what you preach than with the students themselves? "I've just taught on Summer School and a number of students said they enjoyed the interaction with lecturers and are now going to do a degree in management. They find their relationship with lecturers very supportive. It is a department that seems to care about the students."
It's also a department that cares about real-world relationships and in Dr Edgar's field a newly designed paper provides students with the opportunity to link theory with workplace experiences directly. This means students can be confident what they have learned can be applied when they enter employment.
There is also plenty of rigorous brainwork involved, as is evidenced by Dr Edgar's Bright Future Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship, a fellowship usually awarded to students in the hard sciences. Dr Edgar was the first Business School recipient of such an award. Now a specialist in human resource management and industrial relations, Dr Edgar was training to be a teacher when she decided to switch to management. Given the success she has enjoyed she believes her choice was the right one.