Earlier this month, Rob Gordon was officially appointed as Wilfrid Laurier University’s new provost and vice-president: academic.
Gordon has served at Laurier since 2015 as vice-president: research. In March 2017, he was appointed acting provost.
The positions for both provost and vice-president: academic was formerly held by Deborah MacLatchy, current president of Laurier.
When MacLatchy was appointed as the new president, Gordon took over the responsibilities of provost, while the process of finding a permanent vice-president: academic was underway.
Gordon’s new positions will come into effect on July 1, 2018.
“I’m really excited about this opportunity, I’ve been at Laurier a little over two and a half years,” Gordon said.
“I am really excited about taking over the role of provost on a permanent basis and taking the responsibilities of being vice-president: academic.”
In the near future, Gordon hopes to focus on two main topics of consideration: Laurier’s commitment to academic excellence and student experience.
“There’s a lot of strong emphasis that’s built into our strategic academic plan that I want to continue moving forward on. Building on our commitment to just growing as a comprehensive university with a commitment to academic excellence is a key priority,” Gordon said.
In terms of student experience, Laurier was ranked number one in student experience for the second year in a row in Macleans university rankings.
“Continuing to build on our student successes, our student success is identified as one of our key accomplishment of our university,” Gordon said.
“Continuing to build on our student successes, our student success is identified as one of our key accomplishment of our university,” Gordon said.
However, in addition to these two significant topics, Gordon is also excited to continue building on Laurier’s focus on being a multi-campus university through the recent approval of Laurier’s new Milton campus.
“Coupled with the significant success that we’ve had in Brantford, our long standing accomplishments here in Waterloo, our Kitchener campus with social work — building on those opportunities in Milton is something I’m looking forward to in the coming years,” Gordon said.
Gordon has also spent the past several months serving as the Chair of Laurier’s freedom of speech task force. The Statement of Freedom of Speech created by the task force was officially completed at the end of this past May.
Additionally, Gordon hopes to build on the university’s diversity as he steps into his new role.
“We have to really always be thinking about how we can continue to diversify our student population, how we diversify our staff and faculty to real make sure that we are seen as a progressive, forward-thinking university,” Gordon said.
“So that certainly in this role … there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for us to build on that.”
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