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Meet Richard Sigurdson
March 5th, 2009
Of course, Faculty of Arts dean Richard Sigurdson was going to be a teacher. Both his parents were school teachers in Winnipeg, and his sister went on to a career in the field too.
But try telling that to an 18-year-old.
“I really didn’t have any plans at all when I started university and certainly didn’t plan to be an educator,” Sigurdson said.
Still, if Sigurdson didn’t know where he wanted to go with university, it didn’t take him long to find his niche.
“When I was taking classes at the University of Manitoba I found an interest I didn’t know I had,” Sigurdson said. The catalyst was professor Ken Reshaur, since retired, and his Great Political Thinkers class.
“It hooked me on political theory,” Sigurdson said. “I think it was the sense of a world of ideas I knew nothing about before I came to university that attracted me.”
It was an interest that bridged the gap between history and political science – a combination of fields that Sigurdson has kept up throughout his academic career. Initially though, it was only an interest.
“I took the three-year degree program and then thought I would do something else, maybe get a job. At that point I was still unsure what I wanted to do,” Sigurdson said. But he went on to take the pre-master’s year and then completed his master’s degree at the University of Manitoba.
“By that time I was hooked on academic life,” Sigurdson said. “I had done a bit of work as a teaching assistant and enjoyed it. I had the chance to study topics ranging from Manitoba’s electoral history to the political thought of the Marquis de Sade.”
For Sigurdson, the U of M turned out to be a great place to do a master’s degree. His cohort included people who would go on to illustrious careers in government, industry and academics. The variety of people being drawn into the program was also impressive, with international students from Greece and the Middle East signing on to study in Manitoba.
“It was an interesting place to be,” Sigurdson said.
He went on to do his PhD at the University of Toronto, tapping that university’s expertise in political theory, but also acquiring an interest in Canadian politics.
“I got into Canadian politics when I was a teaching assistant for professor Stefan Dupré,” Sigurdson said. “And I was mesmerized by his teaching ability and the way he could have 300 students on the edge of their seats while he lectured about fiscal federalism, which is quite a feat.
“I thought to myself: ‘I want to be able to lecture like that and engage young Canadians in an understanding of our political system.’”
For that reason he still has a particular love of teaching first year classes – the classes where students are deciding what interests them.
Sigurdson has maintained a dual interest in political theory – looking at European thinkers – and Canadian politics – looking at issues from the Charter of Rights to party politics. It creates the added challenge of trying to stay abreast of two fields, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“For me the whole appeal of academic life is the ability to follow your interests where ever they are. You can do research in fields you find compelling,” Sigurdson said.
He said one of the perks of scholarly life is the ability to work with ideas and follow your own path of intellectual curiosity.
“Students always ask, ‘What courses should I take?’ I tell them to take the courses they’re most interested in, rather than those they think they should take for some other reason. Students will have a much better university experience if they go where their heart takes them,” Sigurdson said.
While completing his PhD, Sigurdson moved on to the University of Saskatchewan for three years, and then to the University College of the Cariboo – now known as Thompson Rivers University – in Kamloops.
It was an interesting time to be in Kamloops. The university was making the transition from being a college that granted degrees through the University of British Columbia to being an independent university with four-year degree programs. Sigurdson was almost immediately thrown into administrative work as a department head and then later as an acting dean. Among the projects under his watch was creating a new journalism program to be run by the university.
“Doing the job made me realize I had a personality that was not ill suited to administrative work,” Sigurdson said. But it also made him realize he didn’t want to give up teaching and researching full time just yet. So while he could have applied to become a dean in Kamloops – instead he took a new placement at the University of New Brunswick in 1999. He’d probably be there now if an opportunity hadn’t opened up in the dean’s position at the U of M.
“The University of Manitoba was attractive for personal and professional reasons,” Sigurdson said. “In the back of my mind I always thought that if an opportunity came to go to the U of M, I would consider it very seriously.”
Of course, coming home again is always a little strange. He had kept in touch with colleagues at the university over the years and spent a sabbatical year at the U of M in the late 1990s so he certainly had an up-to-date view of the place. But it was also the same university where he studied as an undergraduate student.
“It’s happened on several occasions where I’m first meeting a faculty member and they’ll say, ‘this is professor so and so.’ And I’ll remember them because I took a class with them 20 years ago, but of course they don’t remember me because I was one of dozens of students in the class.”
Apart from that, there were the usual adjustments of sliding into an administrative position.
“I’ve wanted to be a part of the hiring process and meet as many of the candidates as I can when they come through for interviews. I want to be engaged in the process because a university is only as good as its faculty and students,” Sigurdson said.
Renewing faculty is more than just filling a job. It’s a chance to decide what research areas the university wants to focus on and what opportunities it can provide its students with.
“It’s fascinating to find out about the breadth and depth of research that goes on among the faculty and to see what fascinating work the candidates are doing,” Sigurdson said.
One area that Sigurdson says the faculty is expanding its reach in is the area of global coverage.
“So many of the new faculty we’ve hired do international work that it’s really going to open up the world to students at the University of Manitoba.”
That’s critical, Sigurdson said.
“The University of Manitoba primarily serves people in Winnipeg and Manitoba and if we want to stay competitive as a community we have to have students that understand the world, have the chance to study languages and the opportunity for study abroad.”
An agreement the university has with the University of Iceland is a good example of the sorts of partnerships and exchanges that can take place. Sigurdson says that the faculty is working on creating new agreements, such as one with the University of Freiburg in Germany.
The notion of exchanges is more than just a passing interest for Sigurdson – his eldest daughter, the eldest of four children – is now at the University of the Saarland in Germany on an exchange program that was created when Sigurdson was at the University of New Brunswick.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Sigurdson’s parents had the last laugh, in the end he did become a teacher.
Posted in: Arts
