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Interim Dean Peta Bonham-Smith

New Interim Dean, Peta Bonham-Smith, outlines priorities

Implementing the new college structure, further indigenizing the college’s programming and infrastructure, and improving alumni engagement are among Bonham-Smith's main objectives

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By Kirk Sibbald


Since taking over as interim dean for the College of Arts & Science in July, to say it’s been a whirlwind for Peta Bonham-Smith would be an understatement.

In addition to overseeing the implementation of an entirely new administrative structure for the university’s largest college, the biologist and former vice-dean of science has also been busy meeting separately with each department head and the faculty and staff of each department – getting a handle on the priorities and operational intricacies in a wide range of academic units. The tasks are challenging—especially considering the one-year interim tag on her current appointment—but Bonham-Smith is excited and confident in the people she’s working alongside.  

“In my time as vice-dean, I came to really understand and realize what a brilliant support team we have here,” she said. “Everybody is really just so supportive of everyone else, and that’s really what makes this job doable.”

The college’s revised administrative structure—which now includes a vice-dean of research scholarly and artistic work, a vice-dean academic, a vice-dean aboriginal, and a vice-dean of faculty affairs—came into effect on July 1. Bonham-Smith noted there were myriad reasons to move away from a structure centred around divisions, including to better align the College of Arts & Science with administrative models used elsewhere on campus and beyond. Doing so at this time was also critical in terms of resource allocation, as the new structure simplifies calculations used within the university’s new Responsibility Centre Management (RCM) budget system, which was adopted earlier this year.

Bonham-Smith also said the changes allow the college to move beyond what she called “arbitrary discipline specificity.” She noted that there were departments, such as archaeology and anthropology, and psychology, that offer both B.A. and B.Sc. degrees but were housed in a specific division. As a result, divisional meetings would necessarily exclude departments that, for both operational and academic reason, should have been invited.

“We are now asking heads how they want to interact within the college, how they want to get together. There is no longer an arbitrary divide,” she said. “It really opens up the college for more connections to occur, both in research and in academic programming.”

Bonham-Smith lists implementing the new administrative structure as one of her three main priorities for the coming year, along with continuing to indigenize the college’s programming and infrastructure, and improving alumni engagement.

As a scientist, she has found learning about the operational requirements for departments in the humanities, fine arts and social sciences to be both interesting and eye opening.

“In the sciences, we often need big machines. Well, in printmaking we need big machines. In the sciences, we need quite big labs. Well, in art we need studio space and in music and drama we need big spaces for performance,” she explained. “On the surface, the disciplines may appear to be quite different. But underneath, they all have elements in common.”


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