Backgrounder: UVic Selects Its Next President After Extensive Search

President-designate, University of Victoria

• Appointed president of the University of Victoria in December 2012 by unanimous approval of the university’s Board of Governors. The appointment was the result of a unanimous recommendation from the 20-member Presidential Search Committee. Cassels’ five-year term as president begins July 1, 2013.
• Appointed UVic’s vice-president academic and provost (VPAC) in 2001; and reappointed to a second five-year term in 2005 with a 95 per cent approval rating in a faculty ratification ballot.
• As VPAC, Cassels was responsible for the quality and development of all academic programs, long-range academic planning, enrolment management and the student experience, integrated planning across the university, and the recruitment and retention of faculty. More than 50 per cent of UVic’s current faculty members, the next generation of scholars, were hired during his term.
• Two-time winner of UVic law's master teacher award (1986 and 1996); recipient of the 1998 UVic Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award; 1999 winner of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Award for his exceptional contributions to research and law teaching; and a 2002 recipient of the 3M National Teaching Fellowship—Canada's highest award for university teaching.
• His areas of research expertise include remedies, legal theory, contracts, and torts. Other interests include environmental issues, law and society in India, and race and gender issues in the law of tort.
• Among Cassels’ publications are: The Uncertain Promise of Law: Lessons from Bhopal (1993) about the environmental and human cost of the devastating 1984 explosion at a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India, and its aftermath; and Remedies: The Law of Damages (2000; second edition with Elizabeth Adjin-Tettey, 2008). These works and his numerous academic articles are widely cited in both the academic literature and courts across the country.
• While VPAC, Cassels was a strong advocate of research-enriched learning. He supported faculties and departments to ensure that all students were exposed to the research culture of the university; oversaw a major expansion of research-focused graduate programs; and established a research awards program for UVic students that provides support for exceptional third- and fourth-year undergraduate students to obtain direct research experience. In 2010, in recognition of his commitment to the integration of teaching and research, UVic named the program the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards. This year the program supported nearly 100 students.
• Cassels joined the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in 1981. He served as associate dean and dean of the law school. During his leadership, the school was ranked as one of Canada’s best by recent law graduates.
• As dean of law, he launched the ground-breaking Akitsiraq Law Program that delivered legal education to Inuit students in Canada’s far north, incorporating both western and Inuit legal concepts and traditions. As VPAC, he was a champion for Indigenous education and the development of new programs that led to a dramatic increase in the number of First Nations students attending and graduating from UVic.
• He is a member of the Bar of British Columbia and has practised law and acted as a consultant to governments at all levels on issues of public significance. He was a founding member of the BC Law Institute, and has been active in many professional and community organizations including the Continuing Legal Education Society, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, and the United Way. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2004 for his scholarly and service contributions to the legal profession.
• He holds a BA in law and philosophy from Carleton University, an LL.B (bachelor of law) from the University of Western Ontario and an LL.M (master of law) from Columbia University.
• He is married to Erin Shaw, a lawyer specializing in access to justice and law reform. They have three children aged 21, 18 and 14. Cassels is an avid outdoorsman and boater, and enjoys building canoes and furniture, and repairing diesel engines.