“Racing without direction”: Hugh Gunz Memorial lectureship honours UTM professor emeritus and sheds light on career management
Professors, friends, family, and former students attend and remember Hugh Gunz in a recent online lecture hosted by UTMM and ICUBE.
On February 4, the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) staff, graduate students, and friends and family of the late Hugh Gunz gathered at the Innovation Complex building through a special online lecture by Celia Moore.
Gunz, who passed away in January 2024, served as the Director of Undergraduate Programs and as an Associate Chair for the UTM Department of Management (UTMM). He was also a Professor of Organizational Behaviour at U of T’s Rotman School of Management, of which he was a faculty member since 1989.
The Hugh Gunz Memorial Lectureship, hosted by UTMM and ICUBE, celebrates Gunz’s legacy by providing a platform for experts to share insights into organizational life and what it means to build a successful career.
This year’s event’s key presenter was Professor Celia Moore, who teaches organizational behaviour at Imperial College Business School and is one of Gunz’s former students. “Hugh had such a positive influence in the world, which he delivered largely through his relationships with others,” Moore stated about her former doctoral supervisor.
Her presentation consisted of poignant anecdotes about her time working with Gunz and lessons about building a career in the face of uncertainty and discouragement.
Daring to career
In one anecdote, Moore described how she was confused by Gunz’s use of the word “career” as a verb. “I asked, ‘Don’t you mean to careen?’ He said, ‘No, to career means to race without direction. Don’t you know the history of the word career?’”
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, career, when used as a verb, means “to move fast and in a way that is out of control.” Gunz likened career management to the act of careering, Moore explained.
She emphasized that as much as we can forge our career pathways through ambition and personal agency, there will always be uncontrollable aspects which undermine our career aspirations. Dealing with setbacks starts with accepting their inevitability and working around them.
“We get too stressed about the trajectories of our careers,” Moore explained. “Sometimes you can career around wherever you want, or sometimes it’s not up to you. But as long as you know who you are and what’s good for you, then you can just wake up the next day and go ‘What would I like to put my mind to today?’”
Rather than viewing careers as a series of progressions and setbacks, Moore argued that we should allow for more exploration and ambiguity in our career paths. “We can have some agency over the shape [our careers] take. We can climb, but we can also play, and swing, and wonder.”
Onward in memoriam…
Dr. Ann Armstrong, who orchestrated the event alongside Professor Soo Min Toh, spoke with The Medium about the lectureship after Moore’s presentation.
As the attendees socialized over food and drinks, Dr. Armstrong expressed that she was pleased with how the event played out and how many people came to pay tribute to Gunz. She also commended Professor Moore for bringing Gunz’s teachings to life in an emotional and deeply personal way.
Dr. Armstrong and Professor Toh plan to make the lectureship an annual event “with a focus on graduate students.” Although Gunz may no longer walk the halls of the Kaneff Centre or Rotman, Dr. Armstrong hopes that his lifelong work of teaching and inspiring students will continue in the years to come.
