A new chapter of leadership opens for UVic

The University of Victoria’s new president takes office July 15. Jamie Cassels, who succeeds David Turpin to become the university’s seventh president, was the unanimous choice of a 20-member search committee that included faculty, student, staff and senior academic and community representatives. Cassels is a familiar and well-respected figure at the university as a nationally-recognized teacher, international scholar, influential member of the legal community and academic leader.

“I am incredibly excited about this opportunity and also very humbled to have been selected to lead one of the country’s finest post-secondary institutions,” Cassels told an enthusiastic crowd when his appointment was announced last December.

Since joining UVic as a law professor in 1981, Cassels has also served as dean of law and vice-president academic and provost. Nonetheless, Cassels says that when he takes office this summer, he plans to approach the job as if arriving on Ring Road for the first time.

“The first months I’m going to do a lot of listening,” Cassels says. “I know this university. I know its outstanding students and faculty well. I have a very ambitious sense of where we can focus and what we can accomplish together. But I also want to hear from the university community and the external community about their hopes and aspirations for UVic.”

As vice-president academic and provost from 2001 to 2010, Cassels was instrumental in setting the university’s strategic direction and budget development. He oversaw the renewal and growth of the faculty complement (more than half of UVic’s current faculty were hired during his term), and was a driving force behind the expansion of undergraduate and graduate student programs and services, as well as the development of Indigenous education and scholarship programs.

Cassels expects to bring that same commitment to strategic planning to his new position as president. “Honing our vision is critical,” he explains. “Clear strategic objectives help us identify and grasp opportunities—both to build on the strengths of our institution and take full advantage of the possibilities for improvement that are available to us.”

Cassels also identified engagement in collegial, open communications as a strong contributing element in many of the university’s past achievements. He plans to support and enhance that collegiality across campus during his tenure, both as a means to ensure institutional progress and as an important goal on its own merits.

For the past year and a half, Cassels has been teaching first-year and upper-year courses in the law school, a familiar role which he says provided him with a “renewed connection to students” and a “great reminder about both the joy and the importance of teaching.”