Dan just curious, what kind of problems you guys have encountered so far with the existing "course creator" role. I just did some quick testing, and found that if you restore the moodle test case course (downloadable from http://download.moodle.org/testcourse/) in the most recent moodle 1.9 beta4+, if you switch to "Course creator" using the quick switching roles' pull-down menu (see screenshot), it will lead to a blank page. Is this part of the issue that we are talking about here or should I create a new ticket for this? Thanks!
Just adding my +1 for these fixes, we've had terrible problems with existing course creators and this is just the ticket..