With great fanfare, U of T at Scarborough welcomed an accomplished academic and university leader as its new Principal last week. Professor Kwong-loi Shun was installed as Principal and Vice-President in a ceremony held last Wednesday at the Academic Resource Centre, the new jewel in UTSC’s technological crown. U of T President Robert Birgeneau and other university heads were in attendance as the distinguished professor was sworn in.
Shun is a former dean of the undergraduate division of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley, home to more than 75 per cent of the campus’ undergraduate and more than half of its graduate students. He possesses bachelor degrees from the University of Hong Kong and the University of London, graduate degrees in Philosophy from the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University, and a PhD from Stanford University.
Shun was a professor of Confucian Philosophy at UC Berkeley and has published Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, the first of a three-volume study of Chinese thinking. At U of T, he will hold an appointment in the department of Humanities at UTSC and in the graduate departments of Philosophy and East Asian Studies. He will serve UTSC as principal and VP for a six and a half-year term.
The professor’s appointment comes in the middle of a wave of new developments at the campus still in its first stages. Besides a surge in the growth of enrolment, a total of six new academic and recreational additions are in the works, two of which were completed last year. These include the ARC and Joan Foley Hall, a new apartment-style residence.
The new principal says he was attracted here precisely because of the opportunity to “build something new.”
“This is brain-gain at its best, and it would not have happened without enrolment-growth support from the province,” said Birgeneau, referring to the provincial government’s assistance to universities in the form of its SuperBuild fund.
