By: Samantha Wright Allen
Isaac Otchere can trace his path to Carleton back to his years as a high school student in Ghana. In geography class, he learned about two far-off commonwealth countries: Canada and Australia.
“It fascinated me,” said Otchere, adding he was drawn to images of prairies and kangaroos. “It was at that time that I made it a point that I would go to Canada or Australia if I had the opportunity.”
He did both. Always scholastic, Otchere first travelled to Ottawa and completed two Master’s degrees at Carleton. Next, he accepted full funding and a plane ticket to complete a PhD in Hobart, Australia – with his wife and a three-month-old baby in tow.
“It wasn’t that easy supporting a family on a graduate scholarship while studying full-time,” said Otchere. He took a teaching stint at Melbourne University and the University of New Brunswick before coming back to make his home at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business.
But wherever he’s been, Otchere has succeeded both in academics and instruction, racking up awards at every institution. His latest ones are the 2012 Provost’s Fellowship in Teaching Award and the 2014 Graduate Mentoring Award, his seventh award at Carleton. Others include a Capital Educators’ Award, Teaching Achievement Award, Research Achievement Award and two Student Teaching Excellence Awards.
“How do you do it? That’s a very popular question,” said Otchere with a laugh. He publishes up to two articles a year and has at least three on the go now.
“I guess what keeps me going is the desire to work hard and achieve something,” he said, adding he likes to discover ideas that have not yet been examined. “I have a very inquisitive mind.”
It’s this constant drive to keep things new that carries into his classroom.
“If you don’t keep up with what is going on in your environment you become stale and you will not be able to excite your students,” said Otchere, who designs his courses to relate theory with practice. “You see investors are doing exactly what you’re talking about. They can see the relevance of what you are teaching.”
Students respond to his teaching style, giving him excellent evaluations – only one of the factors that garnered him the 2012 teaching award. He also created a new course on mergers and acquisitions to fill what he saw as an educational need.
But Otchere said the real reward is hearing from old students still using the skills he taught. One called Otchere from Cambridge University to say he was well ahead in some of his classes there. The other students in the class asked him how he knew so much already.
“He told them that he took a course with me at Carleton University,” said Otchere with a smile.