Meric Gertler to discuss ‘The Role of the University in the City’
McMaster alumnus Meric Gertler is regarded as one of the world’s foremost urban theorists and policy practitioners, and is widely known as an expert on innovation, creativity and culture as drivers of the economic dynamism of city-regions. He was named the 16th president of the University of Toronto in 2013.
University of Toronto president and McMaster alumnus Meric Gertler will be on campus next week for a free lecture, The Role of the University in the City.
Gertler’s talk, part of the McMaster Seminar on Higher Education: The Engaged University, will focus on the positive role that universities can play in modern cities.
He is regarded as one of the world’s foremost urban theorists and policy practitioners, and is widely known as an expert on innovation, creativity and culture as drivers of the economic dynamism of city-regions.
Before being named president of U of T in 2013, he worked for five years as the dean of the school’s largest and most diverse academic division, the Faculty of Arts & Science.
Throughout his distinguished career, Gertler has also served as an advisor to local, regional and national governments in Canada, the United States and Europe, as well as to international agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris) and the European Union.
He graduated from McMaster in 1977 with an honours degree in geography, where he developed a passion for his primary research field — the geography of innovative activity and the economies of city-regions.
“McMaster had the breadth of a comprehensive university, but it was a mid-sized campus in a mid-sized city,” he told McMaster’s alumni magazine, the Times, earlier this year. “That was a big selling point.”
The Role of the University in the City lecture will take place Thursday, Oct. 8 at 3 p.m. in Convocation Hall.
Admission is free, and all members of the McMaster community are welcome to attend.
