Don Boyes is Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning for the Faculty of Arts & Science. He is the academic lead for the Teaching & Learning team, which offers a range of services regarding the development and delivery of undergraduate courses across the Faculty and supports innovations in pedagogy, the effective use of education technology, and the recognition of teaching excellence via teaching awards and grants. While serving as Acting Vice-Dean, Undergraduate, Don was also academic lead for the Faculty Governance & Curriculum Services team and the Student Academic Integrity team. 

One of Don's current priorities is helping instructors and administrator's grapple with the powerful and disruptive impacts, both positive and negative, of generative artificial intelligence on teaching and learning.  

The Faculty of Arts & Science is one of the most comprehensive academic divisions in the world, with 29 departments, 7 colleges, 49 interdisciplinary centres, schools and institutes, and over 31,000 undergraduate students enrolled in more than 400 programs across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Don often meets with various Chairs, Directors, Principals, and Associate Chairs, Undergraduate to advise on a range of topics related to teaching, course administration, and relevant institutional and divisional policies and guidelines. 

Don is an active member of the University of Toronto community and has served on numerous committees and advisory groups in areas such as digital learning strategy, classroom design, instructional technology, course evaluation, academic integrity, Indigenous curricula, international and experiential learning, data science education, learning analytics, information technology strategic planning, and artificial intelligence in teaching and learning. 

Don is a Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Geography and Planning, and the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Canadian Association of Geographers Award for Excellence in Teaching Geography, the University of Toronto President's Teaching Award, and the Arts and Science Outstanding Achievement Award for Teaching, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Don specializes in teaching the theory and application of geographic information systems (GIS) and has a strong interest in digital pedagogy. He taught his first face-to-face course in 1993, first online course in 2012, and first hybrid-flexible (HyFlex) course in 2013 (teaching an in-person class while simultaneously live-streaming and providing asynchronous options). In 2019, he launched a series of four online courses as a Coursera specialization, with over 85,000 students currently enrolled around the world and has been designated a "top instructor". He has also recorded numerous educational videos that have over one million views on YouTube. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Don played a leading role in advising administrators and helping instructors pivot online and continued to support them until classes could fully resume in person once the pandemic had subsided.  

Don's undergraduate and graduate studies were in physical geography, GIS, and remote sensing. His graduate research used spatial analysis and satellite imagery to study the evolution of the Mackenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territories. During his doctoral program he lived in the Canadian Arctic for over a year. While there, he began to work as a freelance GIS consultant while completing his Ph.D. and, over several years, served Indigenous, government and private organizations, completing mapping projects and helping them to design and implement geographic information systems, with clients in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Ontario.