Dr. Kerry Godfrey’s eight-year term as dean of the Dhillon School of Business is drawing to a close. It has been a tenure defined by disruption, reinvention and steady growth through periods that often felt anything but steady.

Originally from Nelson, B.C., Godfrey built an academic career that stretched across four universities in Canada and the United Kingdom. He earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Victoria, a Master of Science from the University of Surrey and a PhD from Oxford Brookes University’s School of Planning, later adding both an Advanced Certificate in Educational Leadership and an MBA in Educational Management from the University of Leicester.

Godfrey began his academic career at Oxford Brookes University, served as director of Post-Graduate Programs in the School of the Built Environment, then became the inaugural dean of business at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland before returning to Canada after 20 years in 2008 to join the University of Guelph. By the time he arrived at the University of Lethbridge in 2018 as dean, Godfrey had already built a reputation as a thoughtful academic leader willing to challenge convention.

It turned out to be exactly the kind of leadership the moment required.

Godfrey arrived during a period of enormous transition for the school. The faculty had just been renamed the Dhillon School of Business and had just been accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB), a distinction earned by only a small percentage of business schools worldwide. He would go on to navigate the disruptions of a global pandemic, sustained budget pressures, labour unrest and shifting government policies, remaining notably undeterred.

Under his leadership, the school diversified its program portfolio vigorously. New graduate programming in Health Services Management was launched, and a course-based stream in business analytics was added to the Master of Science in Management (Msc (Mgt)). The school created a new minor in fintech and financial innovation and became the first Alberta business school to offer a data analytics course recognized for entry into the CPA Professional Education Program. In 2021, the school began to introduce a new professional development series, the Insight Series, a suite of now six micro-courses designed to strengthen human-centred leadership skills increasingly absent in modern business education, alongside DSB Edge, a cohort model intended to better support first-year students. A finance diploma followed in 2022.

The pace did not slow. In 2023, the University reappointed Godfrey to a second term as dean while also naming him vice-provost of the Calgary Campus. That same year saw the launch of a diploma in Indigenous governance and business management, a supply chain management partnership with Bow Valley College and a law program with Australia’s Bond University allowing students to complete Canadian law credentials on an accelerated timeline, earning both a business degree and law degree in a five year time-frame.

In 2024, the school transitioned its long-standing Bachelor of Management (BMgt) into a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), a symbolic but significant shift meant to better reflect the breadth of contemporary business education. Soon after, Dhillon launched a new Master’s of Management (MMgt) program in Calgary designed to help prepare non-business graduates and early-career professionals for an increasingly complex and dynamic workplace, as well as a new Certificate in Business Administration, designed to ladder into a new Diploma in Business Administration and the BBA degree. In 2026 a new Master’s in Business Analytics was approved.

And while Godfrey’s educational directions have reshaped the school structurally, ULethbridge’s provost and vice-president (academic), Michelle Helstein, says that Godfrey’s time at the school has also been marked by a commitment to empowering others.

“Whether through the development of new programming that focused on creating new pathways to a broader set of learners, or strong advocacy and support for his academic and administrative staff, or through creating awareness and opportunity for indigenous initiatives,” Helstein notes, “Kerry brought a humanity to his work.”

And many colleagues, point to a corresponding legacy that runs deeper— Godfrey’s work in reconciliation, deliberate and persistent, became central to the identity of the Dhillon School of Business itself.

Shortly after the school’s renaming in 2018, the school became one of the first Canadian business schools to join the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business. In 2021, it became the first business school in Canada to require Indigenous knowledge education for all business students, an initiative tied directly to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

For Godfrey, reconciliation appeared less like institutional language and more like institutional responsibility.

As Dhillon faculty member, Dr. Don G. McIntyre, a member of Timiskaming Nation, put it, “this isn't allyship that lives in statements or strategic plans. This is the kind that shows up— in policy, in partnership and in person.”

Under Godfrey’s leadership, the school strengthened relationships with Indigenous communities and scholars, including internationally renowned Blackfoot scholar and leader Dr. Leroy Little Bear, who joined the school as an adjunct professor and advisor on reconciliation initiatives.

Scholarships and bursaries followed: the Aikimmisa Pookaiksi (raise up the children) Graduate Management Scholarship for Indigenous students; support for the Kas’sin Noo nii’ ksi (our Elders as our guides and teachers) Scholarship celebrating the Elders-in-Residence and benefiting Indigenous students across the university; and, most recently, the Ee gim mi Niitsitapi travel bursary intended to support Indigenous student’s curiosity with travel as part of their educational journey.

Then, in 2025, came perhaps the clearest reflection of that relationship. On traditional Blackfoot Confederacy territory, the Dhillon School of Business was gifted the Blackfoot name Mokakit– “practice wisdom, apply your knowledge.” The naming recognized not only the school’s direction, but to a decades-long commitment to Indigenous business education that began in 1985 with Canada’s first university program focused specifically on Indigenous economic development, governance and business management.

Godfrey himself was also honoured by Elder Dr. Francis First Charger (Ninnaisipistoo) with the Blackfoot name Ee-gim-mi Niitsitapi - “man who has a heart for real people” or “man who has a heart for Indigenous people.” And, in 2026, he received an Iniskim, a sacred buffalo stone, through ceremonial transfer, again recognizing his heart, humility and the responsibility he continues to take on the path of reconciliation through education with Indigenous peoples.

As he steps back from his decanal role, Godfrey has two more projects in the works: the creation of a new professional development short-course series on Indigenous procurement; and the creation of an instructor-led online course on reconciliation as a liberal education credit for the whole university – for Iniskim.

Recently, while researching his family history, Godfrey uncovered ancestral roots in southern Alberta stretching back to 1882 in Fort Macleod, Lethbridge and Fort Calgary. One of his great-grandfathers, an Irish immigrant and member of the North West Mounted Police, worked in the region during a time when relations between settlers, institutions and the Blackfoot people were sometimes strained as they were shaped by broader colonial dynamics.

While we don’t fully know what those specific ancestral relationships looked like generations ago, there is something profoundly significant in where Godfrey’s own journey has led. Back to southern Alberta. Back into relationship and toward an urgent work grounded in reconciliation– a heart that insists that business education can be both academically ambitious and socially accountable.

Those wishing to recognize Dr. Kerry Godfrey's contributions and retirement may consider making a gift to the Ee gim mi Niitsitapi Travel Bursary in support of Indigenous students, helping to extend his enduring legacy of student success, opportunity and reconciliation.

Click here to be redirected to the Giving page and choose Ee gim mi Niitsitapi Indigenous Travel Bursary from the drop-down menu.