Athabasca University has hired a new president of the institution, Neil Fassina.
Fassina comes to Athabasca with a background in human resources and organizational psychology as well as business experience at several post-secondary institutions.
A crowd of 100 people packed the governing council chambers in Athabasca to hear the announcement. He officially starts Oct. 11 as the eighth president of the institution.
“Regardless of what question, what challenge or what decision we undertake to strengthen our academic mission, I am reliably committed to connect back to the values of honesty and integrity, to embracing pluralism with mutual respect and mutual accountability, to finding innovative ways to create openness, transparency, and a culture of communication in indentifying ways to create connection and a sense of community throughout our geographically diverse university and all of its stakeholders,” Fassina said on Aug. 17.
Prior to his appointment at Athabasca University, Fassina has acted as provost and vice-president academic at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) since 2013, which followed his time as NAIT’s dean of the J.R. Shaw School of Business and School of Hospitality and Culinary Arts.
Before that, he worked as a tenured professor and head of the department of Business Administration at the I.H. Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, as well as visiting assistant professor at the University of Calgary.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology from the University of Calgary, a PhD in organizational behaviour and human resource management from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business, and currently leads a research team studying social exchange relationships in organizations.
“There are characteristics of what Athabasca University is facing that I have dealt with before,” he said. “Whether it be around transformational change – and I do have some experience having gone through that – but being able to pull multiple levers in order to create that sustainability and knowing that some decisions are not always easy, we will make those decisions collectively and look to create those changes that we can all embrace together.”
For more on the university’s new president, read next week’s Athabasca Advocate.
