The Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic (AVPA) has its origins in the appointment of Ian Mugridge as Assistant Vice-President, Academic in 1972. At that time, the Office of the Vice-President, Academic (VPA) was itself a relatively new unit, having been established only two years before in 1970 (see fonds F-200 for the administrative history of the VPA's Office). The appointment of an Assistant enabled the VPA to delegate a number of responsibilities to the new position: administrative supervision of certain academic support departments (Library, Registrar, Academic Advice Centre), space allocation planning, and some involvement in academic planning. Mugridge left the university in 1975; his successors took the title of Associate Vice-President, Academic. By 1986 the AVPA's Office had established its own record-keeping system and maintained its own files separate from those of the VPA.

Over the years, the division of responsibilities between the VPA and the AVPA has evolved considerably. Academic planning and budget planning generally remained with the VPA until 2001, when a reorganization of the portfolio delegated the primary responsibility for these activities to the AVPA. Space planning and allocation were early delegated to the AVPA in 1972 and have remained with this position since that time

From 1975 to 2001, the primary focus of the AVPA's mandate was the management of employment relations with the university's academic staff. This began with the appointment of Dan Birch as AVPA in 1975. The AVPA took the lead role in negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) in 1979; throughout the 1980s and 1990s the AVPA was the university's chief negotiator with the SFU Faculty Association (SFUFA); and in 1996 the AVPA assumed direct responsibility for the Academic Relations Office (for a history of this office, see fonds F-203). The focus on academic employment relations continued until 2001, when the incumbent AVPA (Judith Osborne) became Associate Vice-President, Policy, Equity and Legal. This new position moved out of the VPA's portfolio, reported directly to the President, and took with it most policy-related and negotiating responsibilities. With this reorganization, the focus of the AVPA's mandate shifted to academic planning and budgeting processes, institutional analysis, space allocation, and coordination of major and minor capital projects and IT projects.

The AVPA's involvement in university IT systems planning has varied over the years. Support for academic and research computing requirements was originally a function of the VPA's Office, but was transferred to the newly established Vice-President, Research / Information Systems in 1985. It returned to the VPA's portfolio in 1990, with the AVPA (Ross Saunders) having lead responsibility, though this shifted back to the VPA in 1994; in 2001 all IT responsibilities were consolidated under the Chief Information Officer (CIO), reporting directly to the VPA.

Since its establishment in 1972, the position of AVP Academic has always reported directly to the VPA. The AVPA has had administrative responsibility for a number of different reporting units within the university at various times, include the Academic Advice Centre, the Audio Visual Centre and its successors (Instructional Media Centre, Learning and Instructional Development Centre), the Registrar's Office, the University Library, and the University Archives. See the table attached to this fonds description for a complete list of the units that have belonged to the VPA's portfolio, their distribution between the VPA and the AVPA, and the years of the reporting relationship.