Full professorship awarded to first Anishinaabe Métis and First Nations faculty members

A promotion to full professorship recognizes a high order of achievement in scholarship and teaching by tenured associate professors.  Professors Pamela Palmater and Lynn Lavallée have been promoted to full professor rank based on their exceptional teaching performance, national and international scholarly, research and creative activities and community engagement. Palmater who is First Nations and Lavallée, who is Anishinaabe Métis, are the first two Indigenous faculty members to earn this rank at Ryerson University.

“Congratulations Pam and Lynn on achieving full professorship, and thank you for your dedication and exemplary service,” said Michael Benarroch, provost and vice-president, academic. “On our journey to reconciliation, increasing and retaining Indigenous faculty is a key priority at the university. Pam and Lynn are assets to our academic community, and I thank them both for taking a leading role in the advancement of Indigenous education at Ryerson.”

Pamela Palmater

Pam Palmater is a member of Eel River First Nation, part of the Mi’kmaw Nation. She has been a practising lawyer for more than 20 years and joined Ryerson in 2009 in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. Palmater holds the Chair in Indigenous Governance and is a member of the Yeates School of Graduates Studies, affiliated with the master’s program in Public Policy and Administration.

“It means a great deal that Ryerson University has promoted me, the first First Nations woman to become full professor at Ryerson,” said Palmater. “Reconciliation is about taking substantive action to address a long history of exclusion and oppression of First Nations by governments and institutions, like universities. By recognizing both my academic work and my community-based work in First Nations, Ryerson is part of something more than post-secondary education, but a movement to affect real social change.”  

Lynn Lavallée

As an Anishinaabek Qwe registered with the Métis Nation of Ontario, Lavallée’s ancestral roots stem from the Anishinaabe and Métis communities in the Red River (Swan Lake), Sudbury, Temiscaming, Timmins, and Maniwaki. She began her academic career at Ryerson in 2005 in the Faculty of Community Services (FCS) and was appointed FCS Strategic Lead on January 1, 2019 after returning from the University of Manitoba where she was the inaugural vice-provost, Indigenous engagement. In July, Lavallée will begin a six-month term as interim director in the School of Social Work.

Lavallée is focused on the renewal, recovery and advancement of Indigenous education within FCS and creating pathways within the university for Indigenous Peoples to be successful. She provides strategic leadership on initiatives to help build a critical mass of Indigenous students, faculty and staff, and recently moderated a panel discussion entitled Hiring Indigenous Faculty and Respecting Indigenous Knowledges. Her research has focused broadly on Indigenous health and well-being, addictions and mental health and Indigenous research ethics and methodologies.

“Having grown up in Toronto’s Regent Park and within the urban Indigenous community, earning full professorship was important for me as an Anishinaabe Qwe to demonstrate to the next generation that they too belong within these academic institutions and can achieve their goals and aspirations,” said Lavallée. “I thank Ryerson for recognizing my work and supporting efforts leading toward Indigenous resurgence. There is a lot of work to be done, but I’m optimistic that we will continue to progress, by addressing systemic challenges faced by Indigenous students, faculty and staff and recognizing and honouring Indigenous epistemologies and approaches within tenure and promotion pathways.”

This announcement is based on information from the Diversity Self-ID Report. Faculty members who did not self-identify could not be accounted for in this news story.