Provost and Vice-President Academic

Robin Fisher is the Provost and Vice-President Academic at Mount Royal University. As the chief academic officer for the institution, Dr. Fisher works with the university's management team, faculty and staff to provide innovative academic programs with high quality instruction designed to facilitate the success of its graduates. Dr. Fisher is responsible for ten Faculties/Schools, Enrolment Services, Library and the Office of Research Services.

Dr. Fisher was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and earned his first degree in English and history at Massey University. He completed his MA in history at the University of Auckland before coming to Canada to pursue his PhD at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Fisher's PhD dissertation was the basis for his first book, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774-1890. His research interests continue to be in western Canadian history and the history of the Pacific.

Dr. Fisher's first academic appointment was to the Department of History at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. During the nearly twenty years that he was at Simon Fraser, Dr. Fisher taught and published on the history of British Columbia. In 1991, he published a biography of a provincial premier entitled Duff Pattullo of British Columbia.

In 1993, Dr. Fisher moved to the University of Northern British Columbia as the founding Chair of the History Program. Soon after the university opened, he became acting Dean of Arts and Science and was later appointed Dean. In 1997, he became the Dean of the newly formed College of Arts, Social and Health Sciences.

In 2002, Dr. Fisher moved to the University of Regina where he was Dean of Arts until 2005 when he was appointed to his current position at Mount Royal University.

Dr. Fisher's interests outside of his profession are reading, especially mysteries and biographies, movies and the outdoors. He has a lifetime "research" project to conduct on-the-ground surveys of the Pacific landing places of Captain James Cook. One of the most moving moments of his life was to watch the sun rise on the new millennium at Mercury Bay where, more than two hundred years earlier, Cook had observed the transit of Mercury.

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