York President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri has reappointed Harvey Skinner as dean of the Faculty of Health and Cynthia Archer as University librarian. The appointments for the new terms, which were made after extensive consultation, were approved by the Board of Governors on Monday, Dec. 6, and will take effect July 1, 2011.
"I am pleased to confirm the reappointments of Harvey Skinner and Cynthia Archer,” said Shoukri. "Their ongoing leadership and commitment to the success of this University and the broader York community we serve is to be commended, and I look forward to working with them both in the future.”
Harvey Skinner (right) will serve a second five-year term as dean. During his first term, Skinner engaged with his colleagues to develop and implement a clear strategic vision for the new Faculty, for which he was the inaugural dean. Since then, he has fostered new and expanded partnerships with the health-care sector and with other institutions, and greatly enhanced the profile of health at York on both the national and international stages.
Prior to joining York, Skinner was chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. He is a registered psychologist in Ontario and a certified trainer in motivational interviewing. In September 2007, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He has a special interest in global health and chairs the board of the Canada International Scientific Exchange Program. He also serves on the board of the Canadian Association for People-Centred Health and is a member of the Canadian Coalition for Public Health in the 21st Century and the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research. From 1997 to 2005, he was a member of the board of the Canadian Public Health Association. Internationally, Skinner has worked as an expert adviser to the World Health Organization, the US Institute of Medicine and the US National Institutes of Health, which is leading innovative programs for building Arab and Israeli cooperation through health initiatives.
As head of York’s libraries, Cynthia Archer (right) is responsible for the successful development of library resources and services at Keele's Scott Library, Steacie Science & Engineering Library and the Peter F. Bronfman Business Library, and at Glendon’s Leslie Frost Library. Archer has led the development of a strategic plan to guide the libraries’ direction, provided leadership in the digitization of library materials, enhanced access to research materials for faculty and students, supported the development of York’s archival collections and contributed to fundraising efforts leading to the creation of an endowed chair in e-learning. She was also instrumental in the creation of the Learning Commons at Scott Library, which opened in October.
Archer will serve a third term as the University librarian for the period of 2011 to 2014. She has been an active participant in the provincial, national and North American research library communities, serving as chair of the Ontario Council of University Libraries, president of the Ontario Library Association, chair of the scholarly communications committee and e-learning working groups for the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and is active on the Association of Research Libraries’ scholarly communications committee. In those capacities, she demonstrated leadership in the dramatic growth of Scholars Portal, Ontario’s digital library, and she initiated the establishment of Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, Canada’s first online, open-access library research journal.