Stan Blade has been named dean of the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences.
Blade, who is currently chief executive officer of Alberta Innovates-BioSolutions, will replace John Kennelly Aug. 1.
Kennelly has been dean since 2004.
Blade grew up on a farm in Alberta’s Leduc County and has been involved in it for 25 years.
“We have all these great people within the faculty addressing key issues of importance to Alberta and the world,” he said in a news release.
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“For me, the role of dean will provide a great opportunity to position our work, to articulate the importance of generating new knowledge and the potential it has to solve not only some of the problems that Alberta is facing, but also problems that exist across the globe.”
Blade graduated from the U of A with a bachelor of science degree before taking a two-year volunteer teaching position in Cameroon.
“It was there that all of a sudden this idea of the role of agriculture in international development and not just agriculture as a driver of social development all just came together for me,” he said.
Blade completed his master of science degree in plant science at the University of Saskatchewan and earned his PhD at McGill University.
He returned to Alberta, where he worked as a research scientist and executive director of the Alberta Agricultural Research Institute. He also helped create Alberta Innovates-BioSolutions, the government agency focused on research and in-novation in agriculture.
