Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development Lecturer Dave Christesen passed away on Thursday, February 23. He was a core member of the department with a distinguished record of teaching, advising, and service. He taught three graduate and undergraduate classes per semester in Business and Marketing Education and Human Resource Development. He had been a member of the CEHD community since 2006.

Dave called himself a practitioner turned academic. His experience ranged from working on investment and staffing models as a mathematician to vice president-level positions leading multiple corporate functions and multi-billion-dollar mergers. He also worked in consulting across numerous industries as a project manager, change consultant, and leadership coach. But after more than 30 years working in industry, including 20 as an executive at Travelers Insurance Company, he decided to focus his energy and curiosity in the academic realm. Already armed with a BSB concentrated in finance and information systems, he picked up an MEd with a concentration in human resources in 2006 and a PhD in work and human resource education in 2008, all from the U.

Dave spent the rest of his career at the U, first as a graduate studies coordinator and then as a senior fellow in the Technological Leadership Institute before becoming a lecturer in OLPD. Dave said his goal in teaching was to share his experiences in a way that tells a story about the topic. He had a significant well to draw upon.