Dr. Jim Mirabella is a full-time professor of decision sciences at a private university in Florida, where he also serves as the Director of Institutional Research. Dr. Mirabella joined the Sandermoen School of Business faculty on a part-time basis in September 2016 and is currently teaching the Executive MBA course, Strategic Operations Management.
As an experienced educator with extensive knowledge of online education Dr. Mirabella says that the University of Fredericton (UFred) is doing things differently, and that in his opinion, it's working.
"I have been blown away working with the UFred team thus far. In my twenty years of teaching online, I've never seen anything like what UFred is offering."
Dr. Mirabella says that the impressive online delivery system is complimentary to his interactive teaching style. The system, he says, allows students to participate and feel engaged with what they are learning.
"I feel like I'm in a real classroom, talking to people face-to-face and that excites me, and if you asked my students, I'm sure they would agree."
Before teaching at UFred, Dr. Mirabella had never taught at an online university, where live virtual classes were a part of the curriculum. This distinction is what makes UFred unique, and what he says online learning should look like.
The students themselves are also a unique element of teaching at Sandermoen for Dr. Mirabella. From the first day of classes, students were excited about being in class and engaged with the content being presented: "Every week, out of the twenty-three students enrolled, I never had less than ninety percent attendance, and those who did attend came prepared and ready to participate."
Dr. Mirabella is thrilled to be teaching at UFred and is now in the third week of his second course, which he says has been just as enjoyable to teach as the first. For more information about Dr. Mirabella, please see below or visit our faculty page here.
About Dr. Jim Mirabella
Dr. Jim Mirabella is a full-time professor of decision sciences at a private university in Florida, where he also serves as the Director of Institutional Research. He began his journey at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he earned a B.S. in Operations Research. During his Air Force career as a Statistical Analyst, he earned his MBA from Auburn University. After resigning as a Captain, he held various corporate positions including a Marketing Research Statistician at AT&T and a Director of Quality at Convergys. While at Convergys, he earned his Doctorate in Management part-time at Nova Southeastern University. Dr. Mirabella spent the next three years as Director of Institutional Research at Florida Community College Jacksonville, after which he stepped down to run a consulting business, which centred around teaching, course development, analysis and research.
Throughout his career, Dr. Mirabella taught nights, weekends and online at various universities, before finally becoming a tenure-track professor at a traditional university. Over his 28+ years of teaching, he developed roughly 20 different courses, taught over 650 courses (mainly statistics, operations management, and research methods), chaired or served on 57 dissertation committees, published over 20 journal articles, and co-authored an Amazon best-seller, Make Money Teaching Online.
Dr. Mirabella currently resides in Jacksonville, FL with his wife of 25 years and their 12-year old son. He enjoys spending quality time with his family, homeschooling his son, leading at a Trail Life troop, camping with the family, and performing magic with his son (for fun and competition). He can also regularly be found in escape rooms, zip-lining and on ropes courses. Dr. Mirabella is thrilled to be a part of UFred and looks forward to getting to know his students on a personal level.
