Executive Education Visionary Gordon Cassidy

Gordon Cassidy Gordon Cassidy, who was a leading force behind some of the School’s most successful executive education and executive MBA programs, died June 19 at his home in Kingston. Gordon joined the School in 1972 after obtaining his PhD in Mathematics from Dalhousie University and retired in 1998. An outstanding teacher, he received the AMS’s Frank Knox Award – the top teaching honour from the student government – and was a dedicated researcher in the fields of quantitative analysis and operations research. He was founder of the School’s highly successful Program for Public Executives offered through the School’s Centre for Executive Development in the 1980s. In the 1990s he went on to become the visionary behind the establishment of the School’s Executive MBA programs, first in Ottawa and then nationally. The National program was the first of its kind in Canada to use video-conferencing technologies to link students from across the country. His on-screen persona was said to be so energizing and encouraging that many of “his” graduates felt they knew him months before they arrived at QSB for their on-campus component.