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William Alexander Robb Kerr (1875-1945) was born in Toronto, Ontario. He earned his MA from the University of Toronto, before continuing onto Harvard University to receive his PhD in modern languages. Kerr arrived at the University of Alberta in 1909 to teach modern languages. He was appointed as the first dean of Arts and Science in 1914, and during the First World War he was named acting president in the absence of President Henry Marshall Tory.

When Kerr became the third president of the University of Alberta in 1936 during the Great Depression, Alberta’s government was near the edge of bankruptcy. The university naturally suffered cutbacks, even though enrolments had increased slightly over the decade. The revival of the Alberta economy following the Second World War came too late to offer any financial relief to Kerr’s term of office.

Kerr was responsible for setting up a faculty relations committee in 1941, which would act as a liaison between the Board of Governors and staff. The committee was later renamed and became the Association of the Academic Staff at the University of Alberta with the aim to represent academic staff.

Kerr received many honours over the course of his career. He was appointed an Officier de l’Instruction Publique de France in 1924. In 1933, the university celebrated its 25th anniversary and the university conferred on Kerr the degree of LLD honoris causa. In 1935, he became a member of the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur of France and in 1936 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Prior to and during his time as University of Alberta president, he spent many years as a member of the university’s Senate, serving from 1913 to 1941.