Drew is an interdisciplinary teacher with a focus in Comparative Literature, Environmental Humanities, and Visual Culture. He also has a background in North American diasporic and Indigenous literatures, ethnography, and journalism.
Drew came to Yukon University from Thompson Rivers University where he worked primarily on the Williams Lake campus with learners from local Secwépemc, Tŝilhqot’in and Dakelh communities. Previously he taught at The Ohio State University and at the University of Wyoming where he spent multiple summers teaching and advising in a university preparation program for first-generation university students from rural and Indigenous communities.
Drew teaches Writing & Composition, Literature, Environmental Studies and upper level humanities courses. He worked with students, elders and the wider community to design a new Indigenous Literature course for Yukon University which takes a multi-textual approach to story telling. This project explored ways to forefront place, dignity and respect in the study of Indigenous literary texts, and to connect the curriculum with local Yukon First Nations cultures, languages, and concerns. He also teaches courses on ‘The North in Literature’ and ‘Literature and the Environment’ using distance technology and has been working to offer more humanities electives remotely to improve access for learners in Yukon communities. This has included a successful series of COIL ‘virtual student exchanges’ with a university in Mexico, as well as a new initiative to extend online Yukon U English courses to University of the Arctic members.
In 2024 Drew was selected to design an exemplar course for the Laera Institute at the University of the Arctic on ‘Representations of the Circumpolar North’. This course can be adapted, elaborated and taught by UArctic member faculty throughout the Circumpolar region. In May 2024 he traveled to Arctic Congress in Bodø, Norway to present on this work and learn more about Circumpolar education. He also represented YukonU at University of the Arctic Assembly 2025 in Inari, Finland.
https://laerainstitute.org/resources/exemplar-courses
Before moving to Canada, Drew worked on issues of urban policy and homelessness in the American West. His doctoral dissertation was built on a lengthy ethnographic study investigating attitudes towards mobility and housing loss in Boulder, Colorado, and the ways in which deep cultural stereotypes of homelessness come to influence urban policy.
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/etd/r/1501/10?clear=10&p10_accession_num=osu1417675567
Drew’s current research interests include the history of visual culture in the Canadian north, improving curriculum design in remote and Indigenous education settings, and the role of interdisciplinarity in the future of the humanities.
Drew is a keen trail runner, footballer, and backcountry skier. He is a ski patroller at Whitehorse’s ski hill, Mt. Sima, an Avalanche Practitioner member of the Canadian Avalanche Association, has served on the board of the Yukon Avalanche Association, as well as previously working for Avalanche Canada’s Yukon field team and teaching many local avalanche skills training courses.
Originally an Irish & British national, and more recently a Canadian one too, Drew and his family have lived in the territories of the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council and Kwanlin Dün First Nation since 2018 and love to call the Yukon home.
https://www.avalancheassociation.ca/members/?id=46480419
