As a scholar, administrator and advocate for academic excellence, Professor Anthony C. Masi has spent nearly half a century helping to shape McGill University. His vital contributions were recognized with the Morty Yalovsky Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Academic Leadership during the afternoon ceremony of McGill’s Fall 2025 Convocation Oct. 14.
Masi first joined McGill’s Department of Sociology in 1979, where he specialized in demography, statistics, social research methods and industrial relations. He went on to serve in key leadership roles at the University, including Vice-Principal (Information Systems and Technology) and later Provost, overseeing pivotal changes to McGill’s digital infrastructure, faculty hiring and research priorities. He is currently Professor of Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour in the Desautels Faculty of Management.
Under his leadership, notwithstanding fiscal constraints imposed by the Provincial governments, Masi worked to allow McGill to expand its tenure-track hiring, reinforce research excellence and the University’s reputation, and modernize academic support structures. He took difficult decisions with transparency and kept the focus on long-term goals.
“Some people think strategy means sticking to a checklist,” said Masi. “But for me, a strategy is about remembering your priorities and leading with them, even when there are unexpected hits. As an academic administrator, you must focus on the things that matter most; research quality, faculty strength and student experience.”
An important collaboration with Heather Monroe-Blum
He sustained that focus during his decade-long collaboration with Heather Munroe-Blum, who served as Principal and Vice-Chancellor from 2003 to 2013.
“Tony was the perfect partner to this Principal during a dynamic, forward-looking period in McGill’s life,” said Munroe-Blum.
“Tony is a man of strong values and standards, deeply thoughtful and highly intelligent. He served McGill, and our administration, drawing on his long McGill history, his comparative experience of post-secondary education, his care for the members of the McGill community and his rather unique disciplinary and intellectual grounding in sociology, technology, demography and statistics to strong effect.”
Building McGill’s digital backbone
Long before digital transformation became a higher education buzzword, Masi was laying the groundwork for a connected campus. His work modernizing information systems began with the creation of Faculty of Arts Computer Services and culminated in the installation of McGill’s first fibre-optic network. He also led a reorganization of central IT services, infrastructure that continues to support the University today.
“We needed to stop thinking of computing as just a support for administrative tasks or for specialized research,” he said. “It had to become an integrated part of the academic mission, from the humanities to the sciences. That meant building a network that could serve the entire university, not just pockets of it.”
Leadership through transformation
Masi’s vision for a more integrated, collaborative university led him to take on broader responsibilities. As Provost from 2005 to 2015, he helped steer McGill through a period of fiscal constraint while continuing to strengthen its academic core.
Among Masi’s most enduring contributions is the transformation of McGill’s teaching culture. He led the creation of Teaching and Learning Services (TLS), a unit designed to support instructors across all faculties, especially new professors learning to balance teaching, research and service. (TLS recently became part of the new Teaching and Academic Programs office.)
“Our professors, especially new ones, needed help designing effective courses, and our students deserved better classroom experiences,” Masi said. “So, we created a service, not a research centre, that would be hands-on and practical.”
TLS launched with a small staff and grew into a central resource for course design, workshops and teaching evaluations. Masi also initiated the rebranding of McGill’s integrated management software as Minerva, and introduced the Mercury course evaluation system. He also created the Faculty Matters forum to enhance academic leadership, and collaborated on founding the Centre on Population Dynamics and the Max Bell School of Public Policy, among other inititatives.
A return to the classroom
After stepping down as Provost, Masi returned to research on industrial relations and teaching in the Desautels Faculty of Management, where he embraced case-based learning and international education.
He taught in the International Masters Program for Managers, which brought students to campuses in England, Japan, India, Brazil and Canada. Each location explored a distinct management “mindset” – reflection, analysis, collaboration, worldliness and action. He supervised seven students in that program to their Masters of Management degrees and has several more in the pipeline.
“It was a whole new pedagogy,” he said. “But it was rewarding to engage with students again, and to keep learning myself.”
Perfect fit
Reflecting on his 46 years at McGill, Masi says the University’s flexibility and openness to doing things differently allowed him to evolve and contribute in different ways.
“McGill gave me the space to grow,” he said. “Almost every decade, I got to do something different, and something that mattered.”
He encourages future academic leaders to stay grounded, focused and calm.
“Stay calm, mind the gap and don’t overextend,” he said. “Keep your eye on the ball – on research, on students, on people – and remember why we’re here.”