Ian Austin

Dr. Ian Austin, Dean of the Centre for Business, is responsible for the executive leadership of the centre, including the academic, budgetary, and planning processes and strategic vision. He ensures strategic goals are met as set out in George Brown College's vision for 2030.

With more than 20 years of experience of senior level leadership in the post-secondary sector, Ian has led academic, strategic, and operational planning activities in both the university and college setting, and has been an architect of institutional policies. In addition to financial management and strategic planning, Ian's other skills include academic program planning, program delivery, curriculum development, program review and evaluation, quality assurance, and online teaching.

Before coming to George Brown, Ian was Principal of the Barbados Community College (BCC). There, he had executive leadership responsibilities; he supervised divisional heads and senior managers, and oversaw multi-million dollar budgets. During his tenure, he also spearheaded the creation of four new bachelor's degree programs and led the development of the strategic plan.

Prior to assuming the leadership of BCC, he was the Deputy Director for Continuing and Professional Education (CPE) at the University of the West Indies (UWI). He oversaw the restructuring Continuing and Professional Education and the creation of new institutional policy framework for CPE programming. Earlier on in his post-secondary career, Ian served as the Head of UWI centres in the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, and Barbados.

Ian has either chaired or been a member of several governing boards in the university and college sector. His academic specialization is higher education governance and, most recently, he co-authored a book entitled Governance of Higher Education: Global Perspectives, Theories, and Practices. He has been a doctoral examiner and a doctoral thesis supervisor, and was also a Visiting Scholar at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

Ian earned a B.Sc. in Accounting and a postgraduate Diploma in Education from the University of the West Indies. He holds an MBA with a concentration in Finance from the Pamplin School of Business at Virginia Tech, and a PhD in Higher Education - Leadership and Policy Studies - also from Virginia Tech.