If you told Jeffrey Boichuk (BBA ’08, MSc ’10) at the beginning of his fourth-year business-to-business marketing class that less than 10 years later he would be the one at the front of a classroom, he wouldn’t have believed you.

He had yet to decide what he wanted to do after completing his Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), but during that course, he was encouraged by Professor Bulent Menguc to apply to Goodman’s Master of Science (MSc) in Management program.

“He sort of changed my life in that moment,” Boichuk said. “When he made it possible for me to do the MSc program, which is an introduction to careers in research and academia.”

Boichuk, Assistant Professor of Commerce at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, went on to complete his PhD at the University of Houston before starting his career in academia. He’s just one of more than 30 of his peers who have used Goodman’s MSc in Management as a springboard to PhD studies.

“I often describe (the program) as an on-ramp to a PhD,” Boichuk said. “The MSc set me up for success, as a lot of my first-year classes in the PhD program were covered in my MSc.”

Since the program was introduced at Brock in 2007, almost half of the graduates have gone on to enter PhD programs across Canada, the United States and Australia.

The MSc is structured so that students spend the first year completing course work and building a foundation of technical skills and knowledge. In year two, they use that knowledge base to answer a research question that is relevant, current and important to their field of interest.

It was this technical base that helped prepare grad Pinar Runnalls (BBA ’10, MSc ’12), a Visiting Scholar at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln, for her PhD and research focusing on international marketing.

“Once I knew I wanted to go for a PhD, an MSc degree made the most sense because it helped familiarize me with the research process,” she said. “I felt I was well-prepared when I first started my PhD program at Michigan State University.”

Runnalls came to Brock as an international student from Turkey and chose Goodman for her Honours BBA degree based on the School’s reputation. She decided to stay at Goodman for her MSc based on the relationships she had built and the support she received from the professors.

Tek Thongpapanl, Goodman’s Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs, says Runnalls’ path to the program as an international student isn’t unique.

“Our program over the years has been successful at bringing the world to Canada,” Thongpapanl said. “We welcome a number of high-calibre international students to our program in the various specializations that we offer.”

The program offers a small cohort and one-on-one mentorship to help students develop their research and technical skills.

“Even though we don’t anticipate that all of our MSc grads will move on to a PhD program, when you get into research, you almost always get bit by the research bug,” Thongpapanl said. “When you pick the domain that you love, you often find it enjoyable and after you finish the master’s program, it’s almost a natural progression to take a doctoral degree.”

For graduates who don’t go on to PhD programs, they put the skills they gained during the research-intensive program to use working in industry in areas including business and management consulting and macro and micro data analytics for corporations, governments and non-governmental agencies. In these roles, alumni are very hands-on in collecting, analyzing and presenting data in a meaningful and impactful way for their organizations.