I am delighted to announce that the Agenda Committee of Academic Board has approved of the appointment of Professor Robert M. Wright as Dean of the Faculty of Forestry for a two-year term, beginning July 1, 2017 and ending June 30, 2019.

Professor Wright holds his faculty appointment in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and currently serves as Director of the Centre for Landscape Research (CLR). He is also a Fellow of the Global Cities Institute, a multidisciplinary urban research unit founded in 2007 at U of T. He is a strong advocate and a participant in the formulation of the emerging University of Toronto initiative, School of Cities. Most recently, Professor Wright is part of a research team, the Urban Genome Project, which was awarded a Connaught Global Challenge Award and looks at the base structures of city formation and city evolution over time. He lectures internationally on issues of urban open space, green infrastructure, sustainability, and urban resilience.

Professor Wright championed collaboration, transparency, and relationship-building in his previous leadership roles in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, which included Associate Dean, Director of the Landscape Program, and Director of the Knowledge Media Institute (KMDI). Professor Wright is also an active member of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA) and a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA).

Professor Wright’s research focus is design centered and interdisciplinary in nature. He seeks to develop creative design experimentation not only in landscape architecture but also in urban design and environmental design. Having trained in Open Space Planning, ecology, and landscape architecture, Professor Wright places design as a practice that deals with context. He believes that “Design is built theory” meaning that the translation from thought and concept to built works is primary to design discourse. Professor Wright has an MLA from the University of Guelph and a BSc from the University of Ottawa in Open Space Planning, with a Major in Ecology.

Having worked across disciplines and with different stakeholders, Professor Wright is well positioned to expand and build on the Faculty of Forestry’s success.