Myer Horowitz, Ed.D, O.C,
Chair
Dr. Horowitz is currently Professor Emeritus of Education and President Emeritus (University of Alberta) and Adjunct Professor of Education (University of Victoria). In addition to a number of activities in the Faculty of Education, he is involved in LINC-Uc's Youth and Society Research Group and its Learning and Teaching Centre.

Dr. Horowitz assumed the presidency of the University of Alberta August 1, 1979 after serving as its Vice-President (Academic) (1975-79), Dean of the Faculty of Education (1972-75), and Professor and Chair of the Department of Elementary Education (1969-72). In 1999 he was named President Emeritus.

A graduate of the School for Teachers at Macdonald College of McGill University (1952), Sir George Williams University (1956), the University of Alberta (1959) and Stanford University (1965), Dr. Horowitz was a classroom teacher in his native Montreal (1952-60) prior to joining the Faculty of Education at McGill University (in 1960). While at McGill he established and directed an alternative program for preparing elementary school teachers. He left his position as Assistant Dean of Education at McGill in 1969 to become Chairman of the Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta. From 1971 to 1976 he directed a CIDA-funded teacher education program with Tanzania.

Following retirement as President (1989), Dr. Horowitz returned to the Faculty of Education of the University of Alberta as Professor Emeritus of Education. During the period 1989 to 1998, he served as Special Advisor for the Junior Encyclopedia of Canada and as Chair of the Labour-Business Task Force: A Review of Alberta Workers' Compensation Board Policies, the Alberta Press Council, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Special Education of the Alberta Teachers' Association and the City of Edmonton Property Tax Committee. He considers as one of his most important activities of the 1990s his advocacy for the reversal of the Alberta government's decision to reduce significantly funding for Kindergartens.

He is Past-President of the Vanier Institute of the Family and a Board Member of the Celanese Internationalist Fellowship Council. At Royal Roads University he is a member of its Research Ethics Board and its Education Administration Advisory Board.

Throughout his career, Dr. Horowitz has considered himself a school teacher by profession. Consequently, he values the Honorary Life Membership (in 1995) from the Canadian Education Association, the Life Membership (in 1969) from the Provincial Association of Protestant Teachers of Quebec, and the Honorary Membership (in 1980) and the Certificate of Commendation (1996) from the Alberta Teachers' Association. He served as President of the Early Childhood Education Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association, the M.E. LaZerte (Edmonton) Chapter of the Canadian College of Teachers, the Canadian Committee on Early Childhood, and the Education Society of Edmonton. In November 1996 the Early Childhood Education Council presented him with its Annual Award and in November 1997 the Alberta School Boards Association presented him with its President's Award.

He was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from the following universities: McGill (1979); Concordia (1982); Athabasca (1989); British Columbia (1990); Alberta (1990); Victoria (2000); and Brock (2000). In 1991 he received from Edmonton's Grant MacEwan Community College its Honorary Distinguished Citizen College Diploma. In March 2000 the Graduate Students' Association of the University of Alberta presented him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award. When Dr. Horowitz retired from the presidency of the University of Alberta, the students renamed their theatre in the Students' Union Building, the Myer Horowitz Theatre. The graduate students established a number of Myer Horowitz Graduate Scholarships.

He was admitted as an Officer into the Order of Canada in 1990.