Dean Christensen Hughes

Dean Julia Christensen Hughes is an accomplished scholar and noted thought-leader within sustainable business, pedagogy and ethics.

About Julia Christensen Hughes

Julia is an accomplished management scholar who is committed to helping improve the effectiveness of organizations through a strategic approach to human resources management. She is also an advocate for change within higher education and has helped facilitate many national, provincial and local events focused on improving the quality of teaching and learning. Her work on academic integrity has garnered national and international attention. Julia is regularly sought as a keynote speaker and has received a number of awards including the Educator of the Year from the Ontario Hostelry Institute (2012), YMCA’s Women of Distinction Award (2011) and the John Bell Award for Outstanding Educational Leadership (2008). In 2015, Julia was invited to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York to speak on the need for business education to reflect the Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2015, Julia helped launch the “Dean's and Directors as Agents of Change” initiative within the GRLI, which supports change in business education on a global scale. She is a passionate advocate for providing students with engaging, experiential learning opportunities, whether in the lab or in the community, which encourage the application of theory and ideally address issues of significant social concern.

Julia has conducted groundbreaking research on academic misconduct in Canadian universities, which was featured on the cover of MacLeans magazine and received the Sheffield Award for "best paper" from the Canadian Society for Studies in Higher Education in 2007. She was appointed Dean of the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph in May of 2009.