| Alan Shepard | |||||||||||||||
| Order: | 11th | ||||||||||||||
| President of the University of Western Ontario | |||||||||||||||
| Term Start: | 1 July 2019 | ||||||||||||||
| Predecessor: | Amit Chakma | ||||||||||||||
| Chancellor: | Kelly Meighen | ||||||||||||||
| Order1: | 4th | ||||||||||||||
| Title1: | President of the Concordia University | ||||||||||||||
| Term Start1: | 1 August 2012 | ||||||||||||||
| Term End1: | 30 June 2019 | ||||||||||||||
| Predecessor1: | Judith Woodsworth Frederick Lowy (interim) | ||||||||||||||
| Successor1: | Graham Carr | ||||||||||||||
| Chancellor1: | L. Jacques Ménard Jonathan Wener | ||||||||||||||
| Birth Place: | Iowa, United States | ||||||||||||||
| Citizenship: | Canadian, American | ||||||||||||||
| Alma Mater: | St. Olaf College (BA) University of Virginia (PhD) | ||||||||||||||
| Occupation: | University academic and administrator | ||||||||||||||
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Alan Shepard (born)[1] is a Canadian academic and the current and 11th president and vice-chancellor of Western University in London, Ontario, effective July 2019. He previously served as the president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University in Montreal.
Shepard was born in Iowa, and is a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States.[2] He has a background in Early Modern English literature. He received an BA in English literature from St. Olaf College in 1983[3] and received a PhD in English from the University of Virginia in 1990.[4]
Shepard served as the chair of the English department at Texas Christian University from 1998 to 2002. He moved to Canada in 2002, where he began working as a visiting research fellow at the University of Toronto.
Shepard was hired as an associate vice-president academic at University of Guelph in 2005. In 2007, Shepard became the provost and vice-president academic at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), where he worked until 2012. At Ryerson, Shepard led the development of a business incubator called the Digital Media Zone.[5]
In August 2012, Shepard became the president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University in Montreal.[6] [7] His two predecessors, Judith Woodsworth and Claude Lajeunesse, were both removed midway through their terms due to scandals.[8]
In November 2018, Shepard announced he would be leaving Concordia on 30 June 2019 to become the president and vice-chancellor of Western University in London, Ontario.[9] In July 2019, Shepard replaced Amit Chakma to become the 11th president of Western.[10] In December 2022 he was reappointed to a second term as President.[11]
Shepard has served on the board of directors at Universities Canada, Stratford Festival, and the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal.[12] He is currently chair of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.