Rate My Professor Jane Freeman

Jane Freeman is a Professor, Teaching Stream, in the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, where she serves as the founding Director of the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC). She holds a BA and BEd from Queen’s University, an MA from the University of Warwick, and a PhD from the University of Toronto, with her dissertation titled “Speake that I may see thee: figures of rhetoric in Shakespeare’s comedies.” Joining the University of Toronto in 2000, Freeman has more than twenty years of experience teaching academic communication to graduate students. GCAC, originally the Office for English Language and Writing Support, was the first unit in Canada dedicated to graduate students’ academic communication needs and now serves thousands annually through courses, workshops, writing boot camps, and one-on-one appointments across U of T’s three campuses. In 2021-22, students from 80 graduate units registered over 20,000 times for GCAC programming.

Freeman designed GCAC’s innovative “language lego” modular curricula and popular courses such as writing SSHRC grants, from which over 600 alumni have won major grants. Her contributions earned her the 2023 President’s Teaching Award, the University of Toronto’s highest honour for teaching excellence, educational leadership, and innovation. Additional recognitions include the 2017 IMS Course Lecturer Award and a Writing Program Certificate of Excellence from the National Council of Teachers of English awarded to GCAC. Her academic interests include curricular design and development, classical rhetoric, Shakespeare studies, and oral and written communication. Key publications feature a chapter on GCAC in Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, and Program Design (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, 1986–2012, co-authored with Ursula Franklin. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on graduate writing pedagogy and Shakespeare. Freeman is a Senior Fellow of Massey College, a member of the Stratford Festival’s Senate, former Chair of its Education and Archives Committee, and host of an annual Shakespeare Lecture Series at the Toronto Reference Library. She established the Margaret Procter Award for Excellence in Writing Instruction and leads professional development for U of T’s writing instructors.