Vivian Howard

Overview:

I began my university career in my hometown of Vancouver, BC, at the Department of English at UBC, where I taught a variety of composition and professional writing classes. After several years teaching in the English Department, I transitioned to the English Language Institute, part of UBC’s Continuing Studies division, where I was coordinator of Communication Programs for international students. This was an exciting and challenging position that gave me a taste for curriculum design and program administration, as well as an appreciation for the importance of internationalization in post-secondary education.

I moved to Halifax in December 1991 and enrolled in the MLIS program at Dalhousie in September 1992, so I’m proud to be an alumna of the program in which I teach. After graduating with my MLIS, I worked in the non-print collection at NSCAD University and in the library at the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS) before returning to Dalhousie to teach part-time. My part-time teaching became full-time with the launch of the Bachelor of Management program in 1999, and I was one of the original instructors in that new undergraduate program. In 2007 I became the Academic Director of the Bachelor of Management Program and in 2011 I was appointed Associate Dean Academic for the Faculty of Management.

I have a wide range of related research interests including barriers and motivators for pleasure reading, particularly for young readers; social reading initiatives; and Atlantic Canadian literature for children and teens. Since 2010, I have been lead investigator in an inter-university research team developing the Sea Stacks website, a web resource devoted to Atlantic Canadian literature for children and young adults.