Appointment of Professor Irena Creed as Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation, UTSC (PDAD&C #84)

From: Wisdom Tettey, Vice-President and Principal, University of Toronto Scarborough
Date: June 28, 2021
Re: Appointment of Professor Irena Creed as Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation, UTSC (PDAD&C #84)

I am pleased to inform you that the Agenda Committee of Academic Board has approved the appointment of Professor Irena Creed as Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation, University of Toronto Scarborough, for a five-year term effective July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2026.

Professor Irena Frances Creed joins us from the University of Saskatchewan where she is a professor at the School of Environment and Sustainability. She is an experienced administrator, who brings to the position a wealth of experience in leading academic units and directing research centres and institutes. Until very recently, she was Associate Vice-President Research and Special Advisor to the President on Sustainability, at the University of Saskatchewan. In those roles, she led major strategic initiatives to support the university’s signature areas of research. Before that, she held a Dean-level position as Executive Director of the School of Environment and Sustainability, a position she assumed after serving as Director of The Africa Institute at Western University.

Professor Creed is an internationally acclaimed ecosystem scientist, with wide-ranging research interests, including planetary health, climate change, watershed sciences, communities-at-risk, and the science-policy interface.  She has studied environmental issues across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. She is a former Canada Research Chair, and her scholarship has been recognized with various awards, honours, and professorships, including fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada and an honorary doctorate of agricultural sciences at Uppsala University in Sweden.

A proud University of Toronto alum, Professor Creed earned her Ph.D. in geography, M.Sc. in botany and environmental studies and B.Sc. in zoology.

She is known as a scholar who creatively integrates disciplines to advance scientific understanding of global environmental changes: to explore their effect on human health and wellbeing, and to develop relevant public policy to effect positive social change that leads to social justice and equity. Her commitment to inclusion, shared leadership, partnership, reciprocity and mutual accountability, aligns with the University of Toronto Scarborough’s values and vision of inspiring inclusive excellence.

Professor Creed says, “the campus community has articulated a bold vision for U of T Scarborough.  I am excited to work alongside exceptional campus leaders, faculty, staff and students – whose values I share, whose strengths I am passionate about – to implement this bold vision so that together we can find solutions to global challenges.”

Please join me in welcoming Professor Creed to our community. I look forward to working with her to advance UTSC’s research priorities and scholarly prominence, and to support U of T’s overall research mission. 

I would like to thank members of the advisory committee for their time, insights and excellent guidance during the search process. They are Christine Allen, George Arhonditsis, Andrew Arifuzzaman, Zahra Bhanji, Suzanne Erb, Jessica Fields, April Franco, Jacob Koudys, Juvenal Ndayiragije, David Nieborg, Ted Sargent, Bebhinn Treanor.