Colleen Flood has a vision for Queen’s Law, and she’s committed to making it a reality.
Appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Law for a five-year term effective July 1, Flood is committed to increasing research opportunities for law students, eliminating inefficiencies, and promoting opportunities for graduates. Flood sees her role as preparing students for the future, whatever it might entail.
“I want to help students see that a Queen’s Law degree is an investment in their future that will pay off,” Flood said in an interview with The Journal.
“I see my role as Dean to really accelerate and support excellence in teaching, in research, and in service. So that’s my job—to make all of that happen.”
A long-term goal of Flood’s is to provide law students with more research opportunities.
“When I look at our strategic plan and our organizational chart, we don’t have enough resources devoted towards the research part of the mission, which in turn, would give a lot more opportunities for both undergrad and graduate students to work on research. We plan to accelerate that a lot,” Flood said.
While settling in as dean, Flood will continue her own research focusing on governance of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Having previously collaborated with the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences Jane Philpott on a book about COVID-19,
Flood expressed eagerness to collaborate on research opportunities across faculties.
“We can definitely be more together, we’re more than the sum of our parts,” Flood added.
Flood spent time getting to know Queen’s through meeting professors and staff one-on-one. Eliminating inefficiencies is a priority, even though it may sound like a small task.
“We’re working to really elevate everybody. That’s the secret. I think I’m someone who sets very clear objectives, and then I go for it. But I’m someone who will listen to what people have to say,” Flood said.
Bringing people together is important to Flood; joy is one of her core values. She emphasized wanting to get to know faculty and staff working within the faculty.
“I am planning events with staff and faculty where the staff talk about their work, and the faculty talk about their work, then we don’t live in these two separate oceans that sometimes exchange.”
Flood encouraged people of different backgrounds to get involved with Queen’s Law. An exemption from the hiring freeze was made to hire a Queen’s National Scholar for Indigenous law this upcoming year.
“We want to encourage all the potential scholars out there in Indigenous law to apply
and start to build this community of scholars engaged on Indigenous issues and the Truth and Reconciliation goals that we have. It’s a very exciting time in that space,” Flood said.
Flood was raised in rural New Zealand and was the first in her family to attend university.
She has been practising law since the age of 21. After receiving her doctorate at University of Toronto, Flood was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto for 14 years, specializing in health law and policy. She is the founder of the Centre for Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at University of Ottawa.
“It has always been a dream of mine to be the Dean of Law at Queen’s,” Flood said.
—With files from Sophia Coppolino
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colleen flood, Dean, faculty of law, Law
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