My MAIS Journey: A Reflection

MAIS 700 Reflective Essay

Submitted by: Kimberley A. Ilott

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University

Submitted to: Prof. Angela Specht

MAIS 700 Capstone Course – Integrating your MAIS Studies and Research

September 2024

MAIS 700 Reflective Essay

Introduction

When I embarked on my MAIS journey, I chose interdisciplinary studies as I was a new excluded (non-union) leader in the BC Public Service, and I felt woefully ill-prepared for the position. Up to that point, my undergraduate degree in business administration had served me well as I spent the majority of my career in administration and project management. It quickly became apparent that my leadership career was going to require a strategic lens, enabling understanding of the interconnectedness of business areas, components and or processes; integrated strategic leadership needed to become my specialty, or rather, my business understanding of the “many different parts [that] are closely connected and work successfully together” (Oxford University Press, 2024a) needed to become my specialty. This requirement for integrated strategic leadership was the catalyst for seeking my MAIS as I needed to have “different areas of knowledge [and] study” (Oxford University Press, 2024b), or interdisciplinary knowledge, to help with informed decision making. In this reflective essay, I will highlight how my career and previous education set the stage for the MAIS program as well as how the combining of disciplinary background and areas of interest with my academic and professional career experience provided a dynamic environment that produced rich knowledge on both an integrated and interdisciplinary level.

Disciplinary Background

My academic journey has evolved from when I first set out on my post-secondary career. I initially set out to be an accountant, but after receiving a diploma, I shifted into the business field, completing my undergraduate degree in business administration. Over the years, I have moved into progressively higher business positions, and while I always intended to complete my graduate studies, it was my leadership position in government strategy that fueled the choosing of interdisciplinary studies. As for a focus area, the desire to understand the strategic interconnectedness, as a public servant leader, between business areas and across the sectors aligned well with the work, organization, and leadership focus area. The perspective that the stand alone, yet integrated, courses provided has enabled me to think critically while leveraging multiple viewpoints and interdisciplinary knowledge.

It is worth highlighting that my career experience was immensely helpful in the successful completion of MA-IS program courses. The program and focus aligned well with my budding strategic leadership career and through the courses that I have completed, I have been able to apply theoretical concepts as well as frameworks to practical applications in my career from my learnings. Choosing courses that centered around politics, community leadership and development, as well as behaviours and emotions, all of which were grounded with a lens of theory versus practice, blended career experiences with learned knowledge, helping to align with the interdisciplinary studies outcomes:

Integrated Learning: I regularly work with analytics which require an understanding of methodologies and the integration between datasets, health data concepts, and social-economic status indicators.
Social Relevance: With the development of analytic products, as well with partner relations, it has been necessary to apply a critical equity lens to all product development, ensuring that the considerations of justice, equality, and the critical examination of social context or constructs are present.
Paradigm Challenge: In my manager of analytic products role, and as part of an excluded leadership team, my responsibility to ensure that published products challenge the status quo, and that the analytic teams feel supported to think critically to provide an un-biased look at health data, required an understanding of the critical connectors between business areas and concepts.
Self-Critical Thinking: As a leader, I must continually challenge my own bias and objectiveness. I need to be able to think critically in regard to operations, strategy, products, deliverables, and resources, identifying where integration occurs as well as where there may be unrelated overlap. As a result of my MA-IS journey, I am better able to self-reflect and apply the gained interdisciplinary knowledge to my leadership craft.

Areas of Interest

My areas of special interest prior to entering into the MAIS program were strategic leadership, servant leadership, and behavioural insights. Throughout my program journey, my appreciation for, and desire to learn about, my areas of special interest has grown. Stemming from the program, new interests have arisen, such as community leadership and the concept of theory versus practice. The MAIS program, focus area and chosen courses have fueled growth in my previously established areas of interest. That said, the passion that is present for my areas of interest now was brought to fruition by mixing my learned knowledge with my career experience. The passion that exists challenges me to think critically, ask powerful questions, be more observant, challenge the norms, and look at the big picture; as I close out my MAIS journey, I know my decision to partake in interdisciplinary studies has benefited my emergent senior leadership career immensely.

Program Learnings

Integration and interdisciplinarity are complimentary to one another and in the MAIS program, the many different focus areas and courses worked well together; I found that the courses I took had similar themes throughout that enabled bridged learning. At the commencement of the MAIS program I didn’t think much about either integration or interdisciplinarity and I struggled with how theoretical the learning was. In my career and business academics, I had been trained for practical application of knowledge, and interdisciplinary theory or studies not always having a final output was an uncomfortable learning environment for me. As Newell (2012, p. 4) states “one of the main attractions of interdisciplinary research is that it allows researchers freedom from disciplinary constraints”, but it was the opposite for me at the beginning, I needed rigidity and constraints. However, over the duration of the program, and through exposure to courses that married theory and practice, I have since embraced interdisciplinary learning for exactly the reason it challenged me at the beginning. Being given the freedom to think critically and find the integrated elements between different business sectors, component parts, or operational areas has turned into an addiction; to find those unknowns, those hidden gems that enable ‘ah-ha’ moments, is something I strive for, and teach as a mentor, in my leadership career. As I close out my learning journey in the MAIS program, I am left with a deep sense of gratitude and a desire to continue integrated learning as a means to embed interdisciplinary knowledge in my career, enabling me to provide greater value to my own curiosity, my leadership craft, those around me, the business at large, and the people I interact with.

Conclusion

In hindsight, the MAIS journey was an engaging and enjoyable experience that pushed me outside of my comfort zone, cultivating a deep desire to always ask ‘why’. The enhanced curiosity will serve me well as I continue to grow my leadership practice. Throughout my studies, I was continually impressed at (and surprised by) how useful, relevant, and interconnected the interdisciplinary knowledge gained was with my leadership career and how integrated, although seemingly different, the courses and coursework were in the MAIS program. A key takeaway from the MAIS program is that one’s learning journey is a continual, life-long pursuit of enlightenment and evolution, as well as openness and understanding. As echoed by Isaacs (1999), leaders need to create space for dialogue, bringing those around them into an open space that enables curiosity; my MAIS journey has shown how important the cross-pollinating of voices are for interdisciplinary knowledge and growth. In the application of this concept in my career, I found the challenge becomes how to continually make space for interdisciplinary learning when the daily work environment causes leaders to be overwhelmed and short on time to make insights through integrated business strategies. The knowledge that, as a leader, I need to actively integrate expertise into my leadership practice, taking situational context into consideration, highlights the importance of interdisciplinary studies; an importance that, prior to my MAIS journey, I wasn’t aware of.

References

Isaacs, W. (1999). Fields of conversation (PDF). In Dialogue and the art of thinking together (pp. 252–290). Currency Press.

Newell, W. H. (2012). Conclusion. In A. F. Repko, W. H. Newell, R. Szostak (Eds.), Case studies in interdisciplinary research (p. 4). Sage.

Oxford University Press. (2024a). ‘Integrated’. Definition. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/integrated?q=Integrated

Oxford University Press. (2024b). ‘Interdisciplinary’. Definition. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/interdisciplinary?q=interdisciplinary