Page 31 - EUREKA! Fall 2017

Finding the

right path

Malcolm Butler looks back at his

time as Dean of Science

When Malcolm Butler arrived in Ottawa in August 2010 to begin
his duties as Carleton’s Dean of Science, the house his family had
purchased wasn’t ready for occupancy, so he took a room in the
Leeds residence for a week. Not only were his accommodations quite
comfortable (albeit a bit, as he puts it, “retro”), there were also a string
of thunderstorms that week, so the tunnels between buildings came
in handy as the newcomer started to find his way around campus.
The past seven years have flown by for Butler, who is now the Vice-
President, Academic and Research at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax,
where he served as the Dean of Science before coming to Carleton. But
amidst the blur of his tenure in Ottawa, several things stood out.
— as told to Dan Rubinstein Photo:

Photo:
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eans who come to a university The new Health Sciences Building Affairs, which will both help improve industry, has been great at building field, in particular the projects Carleton of life: you’re in the second term of a
and say, “I’m going to do this, and growth of our Health Sciences public health and connect students to connections outside the faculty, is involved with at SNOLAB. I’m really position and don’t see yourself going
DI’m going to do that,” usually program has been a big initiative. It’s different non-traditional career paths. especially with local businesses and intrigued by David Sinclair’s work on the back to being a professor, so the
don’t function very well. Deans are arm’s length from the medical school The evolution of our Data the city’s tech sector. nEXO experiment, and Mark Boulay’s question becomes, “what’s next?” It
monkeys in the middle between the landscape and focused on prevention Science program has been another My own research was in theoretical dark matter research, which is one of doesn’t mean you’re looking to leave,
faculty and senior administration, and and outcome and those sorts of accomplishment. We’ve worked nuclear physics, but I haven’t been the great discovery opportunities at just that you are facing a reality. And
the goal in some ways is trying to find holistic approaches to health, not the closely with other faculties, especially able to do any for the last few years. SNOLAB. There are a lot of things about you cannot control the timing of when
the right path, both in terms of what practice of medicine as treatment. Engineering and Design, and it has Being a theorist is a bit like being a Carleton that are not as well known things happen.
the university’s objectives are and There are also opportunities to create become much more of a sustained mathematician: you need continuous as they should be, and our physics
what the goals and ambitions of the bridges with other units at Carleton, effort. And the launch of Carleton time to focus on your work, and for me department is just one example.
faculty are. So, the challenge is to be such as Biomedical Engineering, Front Door, which links our research continuous time does not exist. But I do This is definitely a bittersweet
effective at clearing the path. Psychology and the Faculty of Public expertise with external partners in pay attention to what’s going on in the departure. It’s one of those quandaries

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