Great Moments: Norma Mickelson

Pioneering female academic leadership

In her final convocation address as UVic’s eighth chancellor, Dr. Norma Mickelson told the graduating class that “every advance that has ever been made started with one person.” She could just as easily have been referring to herself, because it was no accident that she became Canada’s first female academic dean, leading the Faculty of Education at UVic. One of the university’s first graduate students, Mickelson pursued a long career as a student, faculty member and administrative leader, helping to demonstrate and enact widespread change in the campus climate for women — not coincidentally, one of her areas of academic interest. By the time she was elected chancellor in 1996, she had already achieved an escalating series of memorable firsts: not only first female dean and first female chancellor at UVic, she also served as first female president of the UVic Faculty Association, first adviser to the president on employment equity (playing a key role in the creation of UVic’s equity office) and first adviser to the vice-president academic on women’s academic issues. In 1995, she became the first woman to receive a UVic Distinguished Alumni Award.

“Dr. Mickelson was a real trailblazer in multiple ways,” explains Janni Aragon, chair of UVic’s Academic Women’s Caucus. “She came from a field which is now quite supportive of women. But in the ’50s and ’60s, women accounted for only one in 12 doctoral graduates from Canadian universities.” As difficult as it was, Mickelson was exactly the “one person” who first climbed the mountain of gender barriers, not just to demonstrate that it could be done, but to alter the environment for others who would follow.