Senior University Administrators Course (SUAC)

Dru Marshall, Leadership consultant

Dru Marshall completed a 10-year term as the Provost and Vice-President (Academic) at the University of Calgary in 2021. She recently started a leadership consulting company, working with post-secondary institutions in North America.

A nationally recognized academic leader with over 30 years post-secondary sector experience, Dru previously served as the chair of the U-15 Group of Canadian Research Universities Provosts, and as the only non-American executive committee member on the Council of Academic Affairs of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. In addition to her academic career, she also had a significant career in high performance sport, coaching both the junior and senior Canadian women’s national field hockey teams. She has been recognized as one of Canada’s WXN Top 100 most powerful women and as one of the most influential women in sport and physical activity in Canada by the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and Physical Activity. For her work in high performance sport in Canada, she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Dru holds a BPE with distinction from the University of Manitoba, and an MSc and PhD in Exercise Physiology from the University of Alberta.

Dru credits her coaching experience for helping shape in part her executive leadership style, where she earned a reputation as a strong team leader, team builder and mentor.

Florentine Strzelczyk, Provost and Vice-President (Academic), Western University  

Florentine Strzelczyk joined Western University in May 2022 as Provost & Vice-President (Academic). A CHERD alum, she has also facilitated and mentored in CHERD’s Women in Academic Leadership.

Florentine says, “I am a first-generation immigrant to Canada. Of mixed German and Eastern European heritage and as a Canadian newcomer, I am deeply grateful to the Indigenous peoples who have shared their land for centuries with newcomers like me to build a life here.”

Before joining Western University, Florentine served at Memorial University as Provost, Vice President (Academic) and Pro-Vice Chancellor in 2021-2022. During her tenure, she launched a new campus in Labrador, completed a reorganization of the Registrar’s Office, oversaw the Strategic Plan Implementation and Metrics design and approval, and began the groundwork for a new budget model. From 2018 to 2021, she served as Deputy Provost of the University of Calgary. Highlights of her work there include successful negotiation of several collective agreements; oversight of the renewal of the university’s Internationalization Strategy; new policies for academic appointments, tenure, promotion, and merit; membership on the university’s budget team; streamlining of quality assurance processes; chairing of the tri-council-sponsored national Dimensions EDI Pilot; and chairing of the university’s academic crisis management team.