The following message to the University community is from York President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton and Provost and Vice-President Academic Lisa Philipps:
We are pleased to inform members of the Faculty of Science and the York community that Professor EJ Janse van Rensburg has agreed to serve as interim dean of the Faculty of Science, effective Sept. 1, 2018, as Dean Ray Jayawardhana leaves York to take up a position at Cornell University.
On June 26, 2018, the Board of Governors Executive Committee, on behalf of the Board of Governors, concurred with the president’s recommendation of this appointment.
Professor Janse van Rensburg joined York University in 1992 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He was tenured in 1996 and promoted to the rank of full professor in 2001. He has served as associate dean (Faculty Affairs) in the Faculty of Science under Dean Jayawardhana since 2014. In this position, he has been responsible for tenure and promotions, faculty appointments and retirements, sabbaticals and leaves, the Collective Agreement, and allocation of faculty resources. He previously served as the director of the Applied Mathematics section in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics between 1996 and 2001, and was the associate dean (Students) in the Faculty of Science from 2001 to 2004. Professor Janse van Rensburg holds a PhD from St. John’s College, Cambridge University. His research interests are in the area of rigorous and numerical statistical mechanics, and he is the author of numerous publications in these areas, including The Statistical Mechanics of Interacting Walks, Polygons, Animals and Vesicles (the 2nd edition appeared in 2015).
We very much appreciate Professor Janse van Rensburg’s willingness to undertake this important leadership responsibility at a key point in the Faculty of Science’s history, and we look forward to working with him in the coming year.