Two years after Rickey Yada’s departure as dean, UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems has appointed a successor.
Amy Charkowski steps into the role on October 1, following three years as associate dean for research and graduate education in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University, a land grant university with a strong tradition of extension work.
“She contributed to elevating research competitiveness, strengthening graduate education and building cross-disciplinary collaborations both within the university and with external partners,” UBC said in a statement to Country Life in BC. “From this role, Dr. Charkowski developed broad experience in aligning budgets, people, strategy, and institutional values at land grant universities.”
Charkowski began her career as a scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in a food safety research group before joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 as a faculty member in the Department of Plant Pathology. She led the Wisconsin Seed Potato Certification Program from 2001 to 2016, joining Colorado State in 2016 as department head for Agricultural Biology until 2023, when she was appointed associate dean.
In 2020, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
She takes the reins of the department from interim dean David Kitts, who will return to teaching and food science research.
Charkowski’s appointment is for five years, but her immediate predecessor Rickey Yada served for 10 and his predecessor Murray Isman for nine.
She is the first woman to hold the position since Moura Quayle, who held the role from 1997 to 2005.
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