Florentine Strzelczyk
Provost & Vice-President (Academic)
I joined Western May 1, 2022 as Provost & Vice-President (Academic) As the university's chief academic officer, the Provost holds overall responsibility for all academic matters and as Western's chief operating officer, ensures that university planning and budgets align with academic priorities.
I am a first-generation immigrant to Canada. Of mixed German and Eastern European heritage and as a Canadian newcomer, I am deeply grateful to the Indigenous peoples who have shared their land for centuries with newcomers like me to build a life here. I’ve been privileged to live in Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador. It is an honour to now also live in Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations and diverse Indigenous peoples who are the contemporary stewards of the land.
After completing my MA in Germany and PhD at UBC as an international student, I joined Queen’s University as an assistant professor in 1995 and then came to the University of Calgary in 1997 where I was promoted to associate and full professor. I am widely recognized for my scholarship in film and cultural studies and have been funded by SSHRC and DAAD and recognized with a Killam award.
Before joining Western University, I served as Memorial University’s Provost, Vice President Academic and Pro-Vice Chancellor from 2021-22. During my tenure at Memorial, I launched a new campus in Labrador, completed a reorganization of the Registrar’s Office, oversaw the Strategic Plan Implementation and Metrics design and approval, and began the groundwork for a new budget model. From 2018-21, I served as Deputy Provost of the University of Calgary. Highlights of my work include successful negotiation of several collective agreements; oversight of the renewal of the university’s Internationalization Strategy; new policies for academic appointments, tenure, promotion, and merit; membership on the university’s budget team; streamlining of quality assurance processes; chairing of the tri-council-sponsored national Dimensions EDI Pilot; and chairing of the university’s academic crisis management team.
Prior to these appointments, I served as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary from 2014 to 2018. In this position, I led internal restructuring, the development of both the Faculty of Arts’ Strategic Plan and Internationalization Strategy, as well as a task force on Indigenous initiatives that resulted in the hiring of a cluster of Indigenous scholars. From 2011 to 2013, I led three different departments, Germanic, Slavic & East Asian Studies, Linguistics, and Languages, Literatures and Cultures. From 2008-10, I was the director of the Language Research Center.
I have served as the president of the Canadian Association of Teachers of German (CAUTG) from 2010 to 2012, and on the series editorial board of Klassiker des osteuropäischen Films (Classics of Eastern European Cinema), Schüren Publishing. I am involved in teaching and mentoring in the Women in Academic Leadership program offered annually by the Centre for Higher Education and Research and Development (CHERD) at the University of Manitoba.
