Healthy optimism about new faculty
May 23, 2025
Speech pathologist and change maker Tammy Hopper serves as dean of UVic’s new Faculty of Health
When Tammy Hopper was eight years old, a speech-language pathologist visited her rural community of The Pas, on Treaty 5 territory, in northern Manitoba.
At the time, Hopper had a speech impairment, a lateral lisp, that affected people’s ability to understand her. Besides helping with her speech, that early experience with the speech-language pathologist shaped Hopper’s perception of what she could do when she grew up.
“I always think about how that influenced my life,” Hopper says.
In her high school yearbook, Hopper wrote that she wanted to be a physical therapist. But while studying American Sign Language during her undergraduate degree in Winnipeg, Hopper met a friend who was going into speech-language therapy. It piqued her interest again. “I thought—I want to do that,” Hopper says.
New dean, new faculty
In May, Hopper joined the University of Victoria as the inaugural dean of the Faculty of Health—UVic's first new faculty in 30 years. The Faculty of Health builds on UVic’s strengths over the past five decades in health and wellness programs, including nursing, health information science, social work, public health and social policy, clinical psychology, exercise science and neuroscience.
With more than more than 200 faculty members working in health and wellness on campus, the Faculty of Health will help address health-care challenges locally and nationally by bringing together expertise across UVic—through expanded research, academic programs and new and broadened partnership opportunities.
“I’m so optimistic about the new Faculty of Health—its establishment and its future,” she says.
Hopper joins UVic from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, where she has served as dean since 2021. Over her more than 20 years at U of A, Hopper has served as a professor, scholar and mentor to a significant number of graduate students. During her tenure, she also served as Vice Provost, Office of the Provost and Vice-President (Academic) for four years.
One of the things she loves about being a dean is developing new relationships in meaningful ways and working together to achieve a collective vision for the faculty.
A longstanding advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives and Indigenous engagement, Hopper was drawn to UVic’s commitment to EDI and Indigenization and decolonization. She says the Indigenous Wellness Engagement Group, established to advance Indigenous wellness in education, practice and research in the health faculty, shows UVic’s commitment to the purpose, pledge and principles articulated in its strategic plan, Distinctly UVic.
Hopper is a change maker. In her time as a dean at U of A, she participated in the Black Academic Excellence Cohort Hire Initiative, expanded program enrolment to rural Alberta students, and developed a Memorandum of Relational Understanding with Treaty 8 First Nations in Alberta.
In June last year, Hopper’s faculty implemented a new EDI Teaching & Learning Impact Framework to provide a common language and understanding of what EDI impact means in teaching and learning.
She says measuring impact of EDI initiatives is complex but necessary if institutions want to make lasting change in the lives of the people they serve. “Impact is about that ‘So, what?’, the difference that we make for the people we serve. That’s what we’re after, for a positive influence in the health and wellbeing of our communities through the faculty’s work in teaching and learning, as well as research and service.”
Leadership, for Hopper, is a service role. She emphasizes that her successes at U of A came from the combined efforts of her leadership team, faculty members and staff.
“Everything we’ve done, we’ve done together,” she says. “[As dean], you're working in the service of the people you're leading. I believe that my role is to facilitate the work of others, to ensure that we can reach our goals and have the impact we envision.”
Research career
After she graduated from the University of Manitoba with a psychology degree, Hopper headed south to study, completing a MSc in speech pathology in 1993 at Idaho State University.
“I fell in love with the field—and I also fell in love with research when I completed my master’s thesis,” Hopper says.
She started working as a speech-language pathologist in long-term care. Over those four years, Hopper realized there was a lack of evidence-based treatments and management techniques for older adults living with degenerative conditions, most commonly dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease.
She started a PhD in Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona, focusing on improving communication for people with dementia and their care partners. After graduating in 2000, Hopper completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona’s National Centre for Neurogenic Communication Disorders.
When Hopper returned to Canada to start a tenure-track position at U of A in 2001, her favourite part of the job was what she calls the “creative endeavour of research.” She secured multiple research grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and other organizations including Alberta Addictions and ºìÐÓÊÓƵ Health Research Partnership Program. She published extensively in top journals, including the British Medical Journal and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
“I’ve always had a lot of questions about how change happens, especially behaviour change in the rehabilitation process. And also [I’ve enjoyed] connecting with people to find out what it is what they want to be able to fully participate in their life.”
No one, then, was more surprised than Hopper by her move into administration. When an opportunity came up for Hopper to step into an acting leadership position, she took it.
“Certainly, it was unexpected, but I did have strong mentors who guided me in seeing how these leadership roles could be shaped to uplift others, and that appealed to me.”
Looking forward
The first group of students admitted into the health faculty started in May. Like Hopper, many students are becoming acquainted with a new city, new institution and new people.
So, what’s next for UVic’s newest faculty? Hopper is careful about being too prescriptive when it comes to articulating a vision. Listening and collaborating with existing health schools and programs is at the top of her mind.
“I want to continue to build on the strengths that currently exist in academic programs and research,” she says.
Conversations are underway at UVic to develop new programs with an interdisciplinary focus as well as to expand enrolment in high-demand programs. And Hopper sees potential in creating a diverse range of options, such as micro-credentials and non-credit courses to offer more flexible options for learners at different points of their careers. She also sees opportunities for strategic investment to support research excellence, consistent with Aspiration 2030, UVic’s Research and Creative Works Strategy.
For now, she is excited to settle into her new surroundings and immerse herself in the beauty of the Island and lək̓ʷəŋən territory. She’s a long way from The Pas where she grew up, but Hopper will bring with her the same sense of curiosity and openness that has guided her since childhood.
“I am honoured to be the new dean of the Faculty of Health and am looking forward to collaborating with students, faculty and staff across the university, as we embark on this next phase of the faculty’s development.”
—Stephanie Harrington, MFA ’17
This article appears in the UVic Torch alumni magazine.
For more Torch stories, go to the UVic Torch alumni magazine page.