MY CURRENT POSITION
Dr McCready (moi) is a professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University [WLU]
In that position, I have specialized in public finances, including health economics and the economics of education. Because some of my research on the public sector has involved intergovernmental fiscal relations, which are greatly affected by demographics, I have also taught and done research in the area of demographics. Finally, as a researcher in public finances, it is important to be able to evaluate programs and in the social service areas, benefit-cost and cost effectiveness analysis are important and very different than in business or engineering situations, my research has ventured into such fields as policing, health care and social service agencies.
I started as an Assistant Professor at WLU in 1969, received tenure in 1973, became an Associate Professor in 1976, and a Full Professor in 1986. Thus, my tenure at WLU has been a long one.
At Laurier, I have also taught courses in the social work school (MSW) and business (MBA) departments. I have supervised special courses in the doctoral program in Social Work and in the MBA. I was part of the design team which developed the first one year MBA in Canada.
While teaching and research is obviously a part of being promoted, there are factors of community involvement, both within the University and outside the University which are taken into account. I have been chief negotiator for faculty salaries and benefits on two different occasions, been President of the Faculty Association, and Director of Instructional Development. While participating in the above, I also was a member of the University Senate for four terms in total and chaired most the Senate Committees [not all at once], aside from Convocation and Academic Planning.
Further, for a number of years through the latter 1980s and early 1990s, I wrote a weekly newspaper column on the local economy and contributed a monthly magazine article for a local business magazine. One of the skills I have honed is being able to talk to lay people about the economy without the mathematics and diagrams which we use in the classroom.
Back to top of pagePast Positions
Initially, my first teaching position was as a teaching assistant while I was at the University of Alberta. In that position, I taught the only section of an introductory course which was not taught by a full-time faculty member. My students did exceptionally well (top class of twenty sections) and rated me quite highly. It was that experience which induced me to pursue an academic career.
Before that my only experience as an economist had been to serve two summers as a summer intern at Statistics Canada, where I worked on the government statistics included in the GDP calculations.
Back to top of pageAdjunct Teaching Positions
Starting in 1969, I taught part time and distance education students through various programs at WLU. That included experience with Telecollege, where students used video tapes and met with the instructor once or twice a term. The medium was different but it was also exciting to be in the forfront of technological change as it affected teaching.
In 1990, I learned of a program whereby students could take their accredited doctoral studies at a distance. This program was offered by Walden University . I supervised approximately 50 dissertations in the eight years I was with Walden and attended residencies in Bloomington IN, Los Angeles CA, Phoenix AZ, Minneapolis MN, Chicago IL, White Plains NY, and Denver CO. I met some of the most interesting students from all around the world while working as an adjunct for Walden University and have fond memories of many of them.
In 1995, the mood at Walden University changed and by the fall of 1997 I felt the need for a change so I gave notice in October of my resignation effective August 1998 to give my students time to finish or find a new supervisor.
During the year 1997-98 I was living in St. Louis MO and while there became involved with the development of a reincarnation of a University named Greenleaf University. I acted as Vice-President Administration, setting up the office in Maryland Heights and doing recruiting of students. The President was away for the year and the Acting President, one faculty member (and board member too), and myself did a great deal to try to make the place run. It was a learning experience for me as I tried to understand the accreditation system - which is a system in which you have to have students doing well but in order to get students one needs accreditation or one needs huge funding sources. Greenleaf, unfortunately never had the funding to get accreditation. At the end of my year in St. Louis, I was appointed by the Board to be VPAA (Vice-President Academic Affairs) but the recruiting and such was not pursued once I left St. Louis and in 2001 I recommended to the President and the Board that the University be wound up.
During the interim I had been appointed by Capella University to be an outside reader of several dissertations. That led to me taking their on-line course to join their adjunct faculty in the summer of 2001, which was followed by a further course in the fall of 2001. I then attended my first residency as an adjunct faculty with Capella in Phoenix AZ December 27, 2001 to Jan. 1, 2002. During that period I acquired my first mentee in the dissertation process at that University.
Back to top of pageResearch Projects
Back to top of pageConsulting Situations
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