Healthcare Leadership Certificate

A native of New Waterford, Nova Scotia, Kevin is a graduate of Dalhousie (B.Sc. Honours Psychology), Saint Mary’s (M.Sc. in Applied Psychology), King’s (MFA in Creative Nonfiction) and Queen’s (PhD in Organizational Psychology) universities. He teaches courses in organizational and occupational health psychology as well as courses in research methodology and statistics. Kevin is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the International Association for Applied Psychology and the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology.  He is a former President of the Canadian Psychological Association.  His research interests include leadership and occupational health psychology.  Kevin is widely recognized for his expertise in occupational stress and his contributions to fostering healthy workplace environments through effective leadership.  

Dr. Gary P. Ernest is a distinguished rural family physician who has served the Liverpool, Nova Scotia community for over four decades. As an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Dalhousie University and a Fellow of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to medical education and excellence in family medicine. Dr. Ernest's extensive leadership experience includes serving as President of Doctors Nova Scotia (2019-2020) and holding numerous leadership positions in healthcare administration. Currently pursuing an Executive Doctorate of Business Administration at Saint Mary's University, he continues to serve in multiple roles, including Medical Director of Hillsview Acres long-term care facility and consultant physician for the RCMP and Transport Canada's Marine Medical Division. His contributions to healthcare and physician advocacy, particularly during the early stages of the pandemic, were recognized with the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2023. Dr. Ernest's diverse expertise is further exemplified by his MBA from Saint Mary's University and his ongoing work as a WCB Consultant Physician. 

Dr. John Fiset received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University. Before joining the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University in 2020, where he serves as an Assistant Professor in the Management Department, he taught at the John Molson School of Business and the Faculty of Business Administration at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. His research interests focus on how leaders influence intragroup workplace dynamics, multilingualism at work, and experiential management education. In addition, he has consulted for a number of organizations in the areas of leadership, motivation, and decision-making. 

Dr. Day is a founding member of two research and community outreach centres: The CN Centre for Occupational Health and Safety and the Centre for Leadership Excellence. Arla chairs the Nova Scotia Psychological Healthy Workplace Program committee, and she is on the Steering Committee for the American Psychological Association’s Business of Practice Network, which oversees the state, provincial, and national healthy workplace awards and programs. 

Dr. Day currently teaches graduate level courses in Psychometrics (test validation and development) and Organizational Psychology, and her past teaching has included Personnel Psychology, Statistics, and Introduction to Psychology. 

Dr. Gilin's training is in Industrial/Organizational Psychology focused on what fosters productive/healthy versus unproductive/unhealthy conflict in the workplace. Her research focuses on organizational conflict, negotiation, and mediation, the implications of conflict for work stress and well-being, how personality and thinking styles influence conflict handling, inter- and intra- group conflict dynamics, and organizational change interventions. 

Recent projects have examined the distinct operation of cognitive perspective-taking versus empathy in conflictual interactions, how to decrease incivility among workers in high-stress work environments (i.e., nursing) over the long-term, and how disrespectful work group norms can hasten the effects of work stressors on physical and mental employee strain. Debra has a strong interest in applying basic social psychological research to real organizational problems, and enjoy teaching, learning about, and using advanced statistical methodologies such as structural equations modeling and hierarchical linear modeling.