Sacred Heart University (SHU) welcomed its newest dean of the Jack Welch College of Business & Technology (WCBT), Dr. Catherine McCabe, on July 1.
McCabe comes to SHU after a 22-year history at the Sawyer Business School at Suffolk University in Boston, first as associate professor and chair of its department of marketing and during the last six years as associate dean. In addition, McCabe brings with her knowledge gained from being faculty and affiliate at the Institute for Experiential Learning since 2018.
“As I progressed in my leadership positions and my career at Suffolk, Sacred Heart was one of those schools that I was watching and seeing how it was growing and developing,” McCabe said, detailing what attracted her to SHU and the dean position at WCBT, located in the university”™s Fairfield-based West Campus. “When it came time for me to make a decision about that next step in my career, it was a school I was very interested in. And the timing was perfect. When I was ready, they were looking for a dean.”
SHU leadership”™s handling of curriculum at WCBT, especially impressed McCabe, as for the past 10 years the college had integrated computer science and engineering with business, a vital combination to understand in today”™s market, according to McCabe.
“Right now, you can”™t separate technology from business,” she said. “With Sacred Heart, they are together. And not just under the one roof, but we have faculty who have embraced this, and they understand this.”
As part of her empathetic approach toward leadership and collaboration, McCabe believed strongly that all individuals have valuable insights and, thus, one must listen to and empower everyone, particularly experts in their field. As such, she strives for close collaboration with faculty and staff.
“I”™ve already had conversations with them, their ideas and what they want to do and how do they continue to bring the two together throughout the community,” McCabe said.
The new dean noted that, increasingly, today”™s students take great interest in a school”™s implementation of social issues or “JEDI” (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) in its teachings, such as lessons on ethical leadership and responsible management.
“They”™re asking, ”˜Do you have these things within your curriculum?”™ and Sacred Heart has those things,” she said. “That”™s part of the DNA of Sacred Heart.”
McCabe seeks to deepen the bond between technology and business and make WCBT a college of choice by incorporating Experiential Learning Theory. This learning cycle begins when a learner has an experience, which then leads to a period of reflection and analysis, which results in the arrival of new conclusions and is then followed by the implementation of said conclusions. The cycle then repeats itself with newly gained experiences and feedback, the learner iterating upon them. Essentially, this is a “meta-learning approach” ”” learning how to learn.
McCabe”™s goal is for students to have a “common framework” they may apply throughout their future careers, knowing how to utilize findings from past experiences in new, yet similar, contexts.
“We want students to be in an environment and be in the situations that we know they”™re going to experience once they graduate, whether they”™re undergraduate or graduate students,” she said.
In an increasingly technology-oriented business world, McCabe observed that the West Campus”™ labs and studios can offer students such an environment, augmented by cutting-edge teaching tools such as artificial intelligence. Virtual meetings also present an opportunity for WCBT students to collaborate on projects with other students and organizations from around the world.
“We have all of these wonderful facilities to give students the opportunity to experience this virtual reality,” McCabe said, elaborating that the West Campus”™ facilities can give “our students the opportunity to actually engage in this and make it part of their learning experiences, whatever course of study they have.”
