Email: leslie.wexler@uwaterloo.ca
Office: EC3 2012A
Pronouns: she/her
As Senior Educational Developer, Indigenous Knowledges and Anti-Racist Pedagogies, Dr. Leslie Wexler provides support for three main activities at the University of Waterloo: (1) departmental and Faculty-wide Indigenization, Anti-Racism, and Decolonization efforts in curriculum and pedagogy, (2) discipline-specific consultation and facilitation of Educational Development, and (3) initiatives both internally and externally related to Indigenization, decolonization, and reconciliation work of the Centre for Teaching Excellence.
Leslie completed her PhD at the University of Toronto where she studied in English Literature and at the School for the Environment. She has completed all her degrees at the University of Toronto and has recently been awarded the President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Indigenization in Higher Education. She was born and raised in Treaty 6 Territory in Western Canada and her ancestors are a mixed group that include the Plains Cree, Mohawk, Sekani or Tse’khene peoples, and settler Europeans. She identifies as Métis and is a citizen of the Nation in Ontario. Leslie approaches engagement in research, teaching and Indigenous Initiatives with an affirmation and commitment to consultation with Waterloo’s First Nations (Haudenosaunee, Anishinabek and Métis) communities. She values building off current institutional mandates in any way that increases indigenous representation by further strategizing the structure of decision-making to include Indigenous groups.
To learn more about Leslie's work at Waterloo in Indigenous Knowledges and Anti-Racist Pedagogies, check out this interview with her.