FHS staff member earns EdD and learns about remarkable diversity of students’ lives

By Sarah Campbell

As Manager of Undergraduate Programs with the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS), Bratislav (Brad) Mladenovic is profoundly enthusiastic about helping students achieve their educational and career goals.

In April, he successfully defended his Doctor of Education thesis, the culmination of research examining how students perceive their personal circumstances and how they make connections between their particular life contexts and their learning. Through the research for his thesis, Mladenovic came to a deeper understanding of the diversity of students’ lives.

“It is a profound lesson that I learned from my research: if our real goal is to support student learning, we need to understand that our students do not live only as FHS students. Instead, they suffer through, enjoy, and learn from many different life settings and experiences.”

His interviews with undergraduate students in the Faculty of Health Sciences included students who are wives and husbands, soccer players and hospice volunteers, sons and daughters, disillusioned singers and thriving cheerleaders, single mothers and foster parents, and many, many others.

“My study’s findings suggest that improvements to students’ experiences in university learning require that those involved in curriculum and program design, learning supports, and general student services give serious consideration to the remarkable diversity of students’ lives.” says Mladenovic.

While completing doctoral research and writing a thesis while working full time was an extremely challenging enterprise, Mladenovic credits the support of his senior supervisor, Milt McClaren, and his wife, Ivona Mladenovic, with propelling his project to completion.

As research for his thesis progressed through interviews with FHS undergraduate students, it became evident that the participants led very full lives beyond their work at the university.

It was only fitting that he received his degree at convocation last week in the same ceremony as students from the Faculty of Health Sciences.

According to Mladenovic, “The students’ voices I heard in my study will certainly help me in approaching my everyday work through a better understanding of students as workers of learning.”