Dear students and colleagues,
I am delighted to be joining McGill University, as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and as a Professor of Philosophy. I am particularly delighted about starting this new role at this moment when we are returning to a full slate of in-person activities on campus. My priority in the coming months is to meet as many of you as possible to introduce myself, listen to your experiences of McGill, and learn about what you value in the Faculty of Arts and at McGill.
I approach the role of Dean with a commitment to the educational mission at the heart of McGill, a commitment I believe we all share, and to an Arts education in particular. McGill’s mission statement reflects the ideal of a university as a site of both concentrated expertise and education of a new generation. As educators we do not simply aim to share our expert knowledge with students, we also strive to empower them to develop their own expertise and so to expand our collective understanding.
McGill’s commitment to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion strikes me as distinctive among other leading Canadian research universities in its explicit connection to the university’s educational mission. McGill’s strategic plans focus on two areas in particular: reconciliation with Indigenous communities and addressing anti-Black racism. As I begin my mandate as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, I am committed to furthering our Faculty’s efforts to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion.
I am fortunate to be working with an exemplary team of Associate Deans: Manuel Balán (Student Affairs), Tabitha Sparks (Research and Graduate Studies), Michael Fronda (Academic Administration and Oversight) and David Wright (Faculty Affairs). Let me take this occasion to thank each of them for continuing in their roles, and to thank David Wright in particular for having assumed the role of Interim Dean for the beginning of the semester. You can find the contact information for the whole Dean of Arts Team here.
Being together face-to-face offers us even more opportunities to create and sustain the very active intellectual and social community that characterizes McGill Arts . In the coming months, I look forward to working with all of you to imagine how we might better realize our shared commitment to education and the pursuit of knowledge, rooted in a shared conviction of the importance of the Arts towards improving the world we live in.
Wishing you a wonderful academic year with much success,
Lisa Shapiro