New Dean of Arts, renewed V-P communications

By McGill Reporter Staff

During last night’s meeting, the Board of Governors approved the appointment of Professor Antonia Maioni as the new Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and the reappointment of Olivier Marcil as Vice-Principal (Communications and External Relations).

Maioni’s five-year term will begin on July 1, 2016; she replaces Christopher Manfredi, who resigned as Dean last July to become McGill’s Provost and Vice-Principal Academic. Marcil’s second five-year term begins on July 15, 2016.

In a message to the community, Principal Suzanne Fortier expressed her delight at both decisions. The Faculty of Arts is large and varied – it has more than 8,000 students and encompasses 22 departments, schools, and institutes – and she feels it will be “well served by the breadth and depth of Professor Maioni’s experience and skills as an accomplished scholar and a leader.” Fortier noted that Marcil’s “knowledge of the Quebec environment and his experience in government relations have been a great asset in building strategies and tactics to enhance McGill’s position in Quebec.”

A popular political commentator for media outlets such as CTV News and the Globe and Mail, and McGill’s Associate Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations), Antonia Maioni is cross-appointed as a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Institute for Health and Social Policy. Her teaching spans public policy, Canadian and Quebec politics, Canadian studies and health leadership; her research interests include health care reform, social policy and the welfare state and the Canadian political process. She joined McGill in 1994 and served as the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada from 2001 to 2011. Maioni has held visiting appointments at Duke, Harvard and the European University Institute.

Nationally, she has served as President of the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (which represents more than 150 universities and scholarly associations), and on the boards of the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement and the Institute for Research on Public Policy. She currently sits on the Research Council of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Before joining McGill in 2011, Olivier Marcil served in several high-ranking positions in the Quebec government, including Chief of Staff to Clément Gignac, Quebec’s Minister of Economic Development; advisor to Premier Jean Charest; and Chief of Staff to Benoît Pelletier, Quebec’s former Minister of Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs and Democratic Institutional Reform. Marcil is currently a director of the Fondation Serge-Marcil, which helps disadvantaged children in Haïti and Senegal. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the Université de Sherbrooke and a Master’s in History from the Université de Montréal, and has published several works on former Quebec Liberal leader and Le Devoir publisher Claude Ryan.

Maioni’s appointment comes after an advisory committee conducted an extensive international search. For Marcil’s reappointment, he presented a report on his key accomplishments to a different advisory committee, which also conducted a 360-degree review of his performance with 12 senior members of his team, and solicited comments and feedback from the community.

In addition to congratulating Maioni and Marcil, Principal Fortier thanked the members of the two advisory committees for their “thoughtful contributions and diligence,” and Prof. Hudson Meadwell for his leadership as Interim Dean of Arts since Manfredi assumed the role of Provost.