On July 1, Professor Bruce Frayne will begin his tenure as the new dean of the Faculty of Environment for a five-year term.
Prior to his appointment, Frayne was a tenured, full professor at the University of Waterloo serving a second term as the Director of the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development in the Faculty of Environment.
“Professor Frayne’s commitment to sustainability, social justice, interdisciplinarity and internationalization through transformative education, scholarship and service resonates with the Faculty and University Strategic Plans,” says James Rush, vice-president academic and provost at Waterloo. “Together with more than a decade of teaching, research, and administrative leadership experience within the Faculty, and with more than two decades of experience both within and outside of the academy leading several large multi-country multi-stakeholder research and policy networks, he is well-positioned to lead the Faculty of Environment.”
Frayne is an urban planner, geographer, and senior member of the university administration. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu-Natal), a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of Cape Town, both in South Africa, and a PhD in Geography from Queen’s University, Canada.
Frayne served as an assistant professor at Queen’s University before joining the University of Waterloo in 2010 and was appointed as a full professor in 2019. His research interests fall within the broad ambit of sustainable cities, and encompass the three related areas of human migration, urbanization, and food security.
In addition to leading the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Canadian Cities Index project, Frayne works in Sub-Saharan Africa and cities of the Global South. He has served as a member of Waterloo Senate (2012-14) and on other bodies at the university, Faculty, and unit levels, along with several external boards, committees, and advisory bodies.
Frayne takes over from Jean Andrey, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management (GEM) who has served as the dean since 2014.
Faculty of Environment is home to about 3,000 graduate and undergraduate students in five units – the Department of Geography & Environmental Management (GEM), the Department of Knowledge Integration (KI), the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS) and the School of Planning.
