Commander James Patrick Hutton - Masters of Business Administration

Master of Business Administration Studies

Back to a Familiar Place - Royal Roads

In 2002 the writing was on the wall that the days of the Public Service Appeal Board were numbered after the election a new government. Hence I thought it prudent to enhance my Résumé by going back to school to earn a Masters of Business Administration. So I applied and was accepted into the MBA program at Royal Roads University. Yes this was the same facility as Royal Roads Military College. In 1995 the government closed the military college and leased the facility to Royal Roads University.

The program involve three residency sessions during consecutive summers and online courses during the months in between. All courses involved teamwork in groups of five to eight. some of the courses were:

Corporate Finance
Strategic Business Decisions
Strategic Leadership
Contract Law
Organizational Management
Human Resource Management
Management Consulting Essentials

Graduate Thésis

As with my graduate work at the University of Victoria, the MBA program required an original research project. As I was quite involved in municipal government at the time as a volunteer, I chose to research Municipal Amalgamation. In the Victoria area there were 13 individual municipalities operating in a very small area with a relatively total small population of about 500,000 at the time. I found this very interesting given the tremendous waste of public resources and inefficiencies involved in this structure such as operating 13 municipal police departments in isolation from each other.

In 1981 when I wrote my first graduate thesis I had to hire a typist to type each page of the document. There were no computers or word processors that I could use to write my thesis in those days. However 22 years later in 2003 I was able to put together my graduate thesis for my MBA on my computer - no more hiring a typist at $2.00 per page to type my thesis. As a result my MBA Graduate Thesis can be viewed and downloaded here.

Masters of Business Administration

My decision to spend $40,000 on the RRU MBA Program was a good decision since shortly after graduation the BC Government closed the Public Service Appeal Board. Fortunately for me the RRU VP Finance has agreed to be my academic advisor for my project. This opened an opportunity for me when he had an opening for a Director of Facilities. So shortly after finding myself unemployed he hired me to fill this position.