The University of Winnipeg is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Tracy Whalen as Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
Dr. Whalen has served as Acting Dean of Arts since May 2023. Prior to that, she was Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts from July 2022 to April 2023. She has worked for over 25 years in the department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications, a department she also chaired. Dr. Whalen has assumed leadership roles on the Board of Regents, Senate, UWFA Executive, the Axworthy Distinguished Lecture Series Committee, and the Academic COVID-19 Response Planning Team. In the Deans’ Office, she focused on new and rapidly changing challenges around academic integrity, collaborating with other institutions to provide workshops for faculty, as well as striking an interdisciplinary working group to develop learning supports for students.
Dedicated to advancing access and community engagement, Dr. Whalen oversaw successful United Way workplace campaigns and served a four-year term on the United Way cabinet as Co-Chair of the Universities and Colleges Division.
Dr. Whalen’s research examines questions of leadership, as well as power, discrimination, and colonialism in public discourses. Her work focuses on public memory, Canadian public oratory, and the rhetoric of place, as well as the representation and media framing of women leaders in the Canadian public sphere.
Currently co-editor of the UWinnipeg peer-reviewed student journal Crossings, Dr. Whalen is a mentor and much-respected teacher at the University. She is a recipient of the Faculty of Arts Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and has been named by Maclean’s magazine as one of the University’s “Favourite Profs.”
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Tracy Whalen on this appointment. We look forward to the positive impact she will continue to have on our university and the communities we serve.
