Introducing Dr. Gerry Turcotte

Dr. Gerry Turcotte became St. Mary’s third president and vice-chancellor on July 1, 2011. He was renewed for a second term of office on July 1, 2016. With impeccable academic credentials and outstanding leadership qualities, Dr. Turcotte has developed a bold and creative vision to take St. Mary’s into a new era of growth and development.

Dr. Turcotte is originally from Montreal. Before coming to Calgary, he spent 25 years in Australia in a number of academic and administrative roles, the last being Associate Provost and Executive Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, which is the only private Catholic university in Australia.

BA (Honours) in English Literature from McGill University;
MA in English Literature from the University of Ottawa;
PhD in English Literature from the University of Sydney.

• Immediate Past Chair, Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities of Canada
• Chair, Independent Academic Institutions, Campus Alberta
• Past President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts and Social Sciences
• Co-editor, The Oxford English Literary History, Oxford University Press, Vol. 12 (forthcoming)
• Two-time President of the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand
• Secretary of the International Council for Canadian Studies for two terms – the first person in the Asian Pacific to sit on the executive
• Foundation director for the Centre for Canadian-Australian Studies at the University of Wollongong

• 2013 Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, Government of Alberta
• 2013 Paul Harris Fellow, Rotary Foundation of Rotary International
• 2011 Governor General’s International Award for Canadian Studies
• 2006 Carrick Award for Outstanding Contribution to Australian University Teaching (Federal Government)
• 2004 Winner: New Feature Film Writers Fellowship, Film and Television Office. NSW State Government
• 2002 “The Language Ghosts.” Written and Performed at the Sydney Opera House.
• 2001 Shortlisted, The Age Book of the Year, for his novel Flying in Silence
• 2001 Outstanding Teaching Award, Higher Education. NSW Minister for Education and Training, and Australian College of Education Teaching Award (State Government)
• 2000 OCTAL/Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning, University of Wollongong

• The Novel in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific since 1950, Oxford University Press (co-edited with Coval AnnHowells and Paul Sharrad)
• Small Things: Essays on Faith and Hope, Novalis Press
• The novel, Flying in Silence
• Four collections of poetry and a multimedia work called Border Crossing: Words and Images
• Peripheral Fear: Transformations of the Gothic in Australia and Canada
• Unsettled Remains: Canadian Literature and the Postcolonial Gothic shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism (co-edited with Cynthia Sugars)
• First collection of critical essays on the works of Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis entitled The Maker of History
• Canada-Australia: Towards a Second Century of Partnership with Kate Burridge and Lois Foster
• Compr(om)ising Postcolonialism(s): Challenging Narratives and Practices with Greg Ratcliffe
• Diasporic Spectrality: Minorities and Cultural Assertions in Canada, Australia & Beyond, with Gaetano Rando

Dr. Turcotte also produced articles, reviews and feature programs for The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and for ABC Radio respectively and managed the extremely successful Writer’s Choice series in Sydney for seven seasons.

• The Installation of Dr. Gerry Turcotte
• A Glimpse in the life of Dr. Gerry Turcotte
• President’s Message
• Articles by Dr. Gerry Turcotte