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Non-Traditional Traditionalism:
An Interview with Dr. Sandra Jarvis-Selinger

By Nelson Shen

Tucked away in the draft folder of Dr. Sandra Jarvis-Selinger’s inbox lies an unfinished email addressed to her former supervisor (now colleague and mentor) describing the anxiety and doubts she was having at that point in her career. "I always kept that email that I was drafting. I still have it to this day. Drafted to my mentor saying that I really thought I was going down that dead end road." Ironically, while drafting the email, she received one from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research notifying her that she was the recipient of their Michael Smith Career Investigator Award. At that point in time Sandra could finally take a breather; It was when things "really changed and solidified the things that I was doing."

Although it was a long road traveled to get to that point, Sandra grew to enjoy the challenges faced in her career. "I actually like swimming upstream" she explains, "…on the days that I am down, it’s the reason it gets me down. But I like the fact that I have a non-traditional application of a fairly traditional education." This was a common theme in her interview and inspired the term "non-traditional traditionalism." At the time of its conception, this pretentious oxymoron served the purpose of decorating this article with an interesting title; however, in afterthought, this idiom began to make increasingly more sense as her unconventional journey from a "failed law school wannabe" to her current appointment at the UBC Faculty of Medicine was mapped out.

Long before she was a UBC Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery and Assistant Director of Education at the UBC eHealth Strategy Office, Sandra had her eyes fixated on becoming a lawyer. With Bachelor degrees in both business and political science, Sandra initially endeavored to apply for Law School. This thought was short lived as she decided that it was not the right path for her. Subsequently, she decided that she would take a year off school to travel; however, after some persuasive lobbying by her father, the decision to travel was upended and Sandra found herself working towards a Bachelor of Education that year.

Equipped with the tools to empower future generations, Sandra found herself in a First Nations fly-in school teaching the odd mix of Kindergarten students in the morning and Grade 10 students in the afternoon. This was the only option at the time because of the competitive application process for long-term teaching contracts in her hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario. To gain an advantage over her competitors, Sandra made the decision to pursue a Master of Educational Psychology at UBC. Despite having the intention to return to Thunder Bay as a teacher, the program expanded her personal pedagogical philosophy causing her to reevaluate returning to frontlines to teach. "When I got into the masters program I realized I had a real affinity for educational research. So I continued on with a PhD and I was teaching in the Faculty of Education. I realized at that point that I was impacting more students by impacting more teachers. Instead of just impacting my class now I was impacting all the teachers that impacted all their classes."

Sandra’s desire to teach in the UBC Faculty of Education was thwarted by the faculty’s policy on bureaucratic nepotism; moreover, relocating to another university to fulfill this vision was not an option, as her husband could not leave his job without losing his seniority at the fire department. In an interesting turn of events, the position of Director of Research in the Division of Continuing Medical Education at UBC opened up and her faculty supervisor advised her to apply for the job. Her supervisor’s rationale was not for her to actually get the job, but for her to gain invaluable experience in resume submission and the interview process. He figured that position was likely to ask for someone with some medical experience. Experience she did not have.

A lack of experience did not deter Sandra from fully pursuing this position. In fact, she identifies this as the monumental event in her career. "The defining moment was when Kendall Ho and Luke Ferdinands – who at the time was the executive director of CME – taking a chance on someone who said to them in an interview very honestly, ‘The only thing I know about medicine is my personal health number, but I know a lot about research and I know a lot about behavioural change and I know a lot about creating educational opportunities. Take a chance.’

After the first round of interviews, Sandra was asked to return for another round of interviews. Despite the good news, it was again met with skepticism as her supervisor tried preparing her for disappointment, "‘Well that’s good, they’re probably comparing you to the candidate that they want. It gives them a sense of who they’re going to choose.’ Then they offered me the job and he said ‘You should take it.’ So I didn’t look back from that... This was the defining moment to say that you can be an educational psychologist and be very successful outside of the traditional options outside of that cohort."

Five years after taking on her research director role, Sandra was offered a faculty position where she would function as the educational scholar that supports programs both in the eHealth Strategy Office and the Department of Surgery. At this point, her career came full circle as it brought back that educational focus that she sought during her PhD.

As a "Dr. Non-Clinician" working in a medical context, some professional barriers manifested as a result of the designation. "If somebody says that they are Dr. Smith in history; people know that they are Dr. Smith with a PhD in History. If you say you’re Dr. Jarvis-Selinger in Surgery, there is a whole bunch of explanation that goes on after that somewhere after stopping them asking you all the things they want solved medically from you. I think that is one side of it. Just unpacking what all that means. The other side is also how you are viewed by peers. In 99% of the cases you see that people are very supportive and really see a role for me in supporting their education programming. In 1% of the cases there is real resistance to having someone non-clinical in that position. In the worst case scenario was being non-clinical and a woman. I was getting that kind of resistance coming in despite having an understanding that I had an opinion of expertise that contributed to but did not overstep clinical expertise in the room. But there were certainly issues around circumnavigating that. The other one is explaining to your family what you do (laughs)…"

This theme of a defined identity reemerged when Sandra was asked about where she wants to see TEKTIC be in the next five years. She hopes that TEKTIC will have a firmly established identity. One in which there is no need to "unpack the acronym" to understand its purpose. She elaborates, "When you can say something where the people you’re impacting in the field should have some understanding of that (TEKTIC)… It doesn’t have to be all things to all people, but it has to be something that is very useful, valuable and applicable to the groups that it serves. So in that way a bit of it is branding but a bit of – if I take from education – the developmental trajectory. Where you start to understand who you are and you understand who you’re not."

Moreover, Sandra values the capacity building aspect of TEKTIC’s vision. One of the things I see with my faculty role at UBC is to be able to understand who the people are who are coming along and really provide mentorship to that group." This sentiment is exemplified in her faculty appointment at UBC. "Even going back a couple of times when I spoken to the incoming PhD group of the Faculty of Education, I told them that there are things outside of where you thought you can have value and impact. I really like the fact that when I sit around a table there aren’t seven of me around the table." In other words, be open-minded with your career because there is always an opportunity to have a "non-traditional application of a traditional education." Afterall, this sense of nontraditional traditionalism has worked for Sandra and appears to be a part of a legacy that Sandra hopes to leave with future generations.

On the TICr with Sandra

First job: Phone operator at father’s insurance adjustment firm at the age of 14.

Three things to bring to a deserted island: iTouch with unlimited memory, power, and all the necessary movies downloaded onto it; sunscreen; and the Diana Golbalden collection of fictional historical writings on the Scottish Civil War.

First album ever bought (question from Dr. Helen Novak Lauscher): Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast

Question for the next TICr interviewee: How long can you live without technology?