Head and shoulders image of James Balfour Kirkpatrick, Dean of Education, 1956-1976.

Bio/Historical Note: James Balfour Kirkpatrick was born on a farm near Saskatoon in 1909, the same year in which the College Building was constructed. He completed his BA, BEd, and MEd degrees at the University of Saskatchewan, and his doctorate in physical education at Columbia University. From 1944-1948 he served as Director of the Physical Fitness Division for Saskatchewan. In 1948 he accepted the appointment as Director and Professor of Physical Education at McGill University. From 1956 to 1976, Kirkpatrick was Dean of Education at the U of S. In the field of physical education, as Director of the Physical Fitness Division of the Province of Saskatchewan, Kirkpatrick was insistent that its mandate be much wider than a concern for physical fitness only. As Dean of Education and through cooperation with a variety of agencies and individuals, he established many innovative practices and programs. In order to address the needs in Aboriginal education, he established the Indian and Northern Education Program in 1963, the Indian Teacher Education Program in 1973, and the North West Territory Teacher Education Program in 1975; and set the groundwork for the Northern Teacher Education Program in 1976. On 22 September 1975, Kirkpatrick suspended Doug Wilson's work as a supervisor of practice teaching in public schools, on the grounds of Wilson's open admission of his homosexuality and his public involvement in the gay liberation movement. A Committee to Defend Doug Wilson was formed to fight the university's action, and Wilson placed a formal complaint with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. The inquiry was never held, as the Court of Queen's Bench ruled that sexuality was not covered by The Fair Employment Practices Act. Kirkpatrick played a prominent role in the amalgamation of the Teachers' Colleges into the University. The program reforms engineered by Kirkpatrick redirected the course content away from a purely academic orientation to one that considered the needs of children in a complex contemporary society. An innovative venture that has been widely copied and has become the core of teacher education programs today, the extended practicum or internship, was established by Kirkpatrick in 1963. Kirkpatrick was awarded an honourary Doctor of Laws degree in 1990 by the U of S. He died in Saskatoon in 1998.