As we come to the end of Winter semester, I would like to acknowledge the progress we have made together this year in pursuit of Teaching Greatness. Beyond our record enrolment, we have seen more activity in summer, more recognition of classroom excellence, more scholarly activity and community engagement with our students, more program innovation, and more faculty and staff hiring, with particular emphasis on recruitment that helps us honour our place in O-day’min.
Last week’s announcement of Terri Cardinal’s appointment as associate vice-president, Indigenous Initiatives and Engagement marks one administrative development essential to us as we scale up through the rest of this decade. I would like to share with you today some additional planned changes.
Effective May 13, Dr. Edvard Lorkovic will begin an appointment as interim deputy provost. While I meet every two weeks, individually, with each senior leader in Academic Affairs, Dr. Lorkovic will facilitate additional collaborative exchanges amongst multiple leaders in developing university-wide academic partnerships. Holding ourselves to internal and external measures of our goals for 2030 requires us to monitor our progress, and Dr. Lorkovic, who has almost a decade of leadership experience at MacEwan, will build a role that also helps us do so. Once the role is established, we’ll conduct a national search for someone to serve an initial five-year term.
Chandelle Rimmer has been serving as interim associate vice-president, Students since the departure of her predecessor last autumn. We have asked her to model the further development of Student Affairs into two units, recognizing the exponential growth in the portfolio and acknowledging that the need for support will not abate as we prepare for as many as 30,000 students by the end of the decade. We hope to launch a national search at the end of summer for a complementary AVP position to lead the second unit. I expect that we will welcome a new colleague into leadership during the 2024/25 academic year, at which time we will complete this reorganization in Student Affairs and start a subsequent search to fill the role Professor Rimmer has been holding on an interim basis.
Dr. Melike Schalomon, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, will complete her one-year term as vice-provost on June 30, and Dr. Christy Raymond, dean of the Faculty of Nursing, has agreed to assume the role of vice-provost for a one-year term on July 1. We have already welcomed Julie Green as registrar and associate vice-president, Strategic Enrolment Management, and you recall that Professor Deric Olsen will join us this summer to begin his initial, five-year term as dean, Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications. Dr. Craig Kuziemsky, associate vice-president, Research, and Karen Keiller, dean of the Library, have both been reappointed, and the latter has chosen to take her earned administrative leave in 2024/25. Dr. Eva Revitt will serve a one-year term as interim dean of the Library while Dean Keiller is away.
Over the course of my time as provost, we have established that most of our out-of-scope managers in a self-governing community of scholars should be associate deans with academic appointments. Colleagues cycle in and out of these roles on a regular basis. Our newest Provost’s Group members include Dr. Mike Annett, Robyn Hall, Dr. Matthew LaGrone, and Dr. Jillian Skeffington.
I remain committed to as flat and modest an administration as possible in Academic Affairs, and MacEwan University remains well below the benchmark for administrative complement set by the provincial government. These further changes help build capacity, aid with succession planning, and create a more resilient Academic Affairs in pursuit of our bold strategic goals. Please join me in thanking colleagues, past and present, for their willingness to do this work.
Dr. Craig Monk
Provost & Vice-President, Academic
Originally distributed via GlobalMail on April 9