Every few years, a new program director is appointed to each of Telfer’s graduate and executive-level programs. Following the favourable recommendation of the selection committee, Dean Stéphane Brutus announced Professor Walid Ben Amar as the newest PhD Program Director at the Telfer School of Management who will serve a mandate of three years from July 1st, 2022, to June 30th, 2025.
Meet the New Program Director
Walid Ben Amar is an Associate Professor of accounting at Telfer with a Master of Accounting from Université du Québec à Montréal and a PhD in Business Administration from HEC Montréal. Professor Ben Amar teaches both financial and managerial accounting courses at the undergraduate and MBA levels. He also serves on Telfer’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, driving forward Telfer’s goals for creating more inclusive and diverse programs.
History of the PhD Program at Telfer
For over 40 years, there were ambitions for Telfer to launch a PhD program under Dean François Julien’s leadership. Professor Barbara Orser stepped in alongside Danielle Bennette under the support and guidance of Dean Julien to go through the stages of creating this program. After years of dedication and considerable effort, approvals were reached in 2013 and the program was launched in 2016.
The program’s first director, Professor Silvia Bonaccio, was integral to the program’s success, after spending two years helping to build the program prior to its launch. Professor Mirou Jaana took over as program director following Professor Bonaccio’s mandate. Professor Jaana was credited with launching the first revision of the PhD program, resulting in the addition of a new field of study: Strategy and Organization.
Today, the PhD program has six key fields of study: Accounting and Control, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Health Systems, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources, and Strategy and Organization.
We celebrated the successful first Telfer PhD graduating cohort when Vusal Babashov was the first to complete his PhD in Management after successfully defending his thesis in 2021. Vusal shared that the experience of completing his PhD at Telfer made him a better person, a self-motivated leader, and an avid problem-solver.
Thank you Professor Chreim
The most recent and former PhD Director, Professor Samia Chreim, had a huge impact on the program. “Under her leadership, the progress of students in the program was remarkable, despite very difficult circumstances,” shared Dean Brutus in his announcement of this leadership change. Among other things, Professor Chreim implemented more flexibility for our PhD students, provided mental health support to students during the pandemic, organized countless information sessions, and established the PhD student lounge. Thank you to Professor Samia Chreim for her hard work and dedication to our doctoral program and its students.
