The SwB program:
A) received David Johnston's representative in Brazil.
B) is sponsoring students from all areas of knowledge.
C) focuses on students applying for a mester's degree.
D) will finance foreigners interested in studying Brazil.
E) locks for at senior researchers from the private sector.
Soluções para a tarefa
"See that rooster over there?" Johnston says, pointing to a carved wooden bird on a pole sitting next to his desk in the president's office at Waterloo. "It's over a weather vane. That's me. Vain rooster."
He is referring to how upset it makes him to be bad at any sport. While he has excelled at many - famously becoming an "all-American" when playing hockey at Harvard - he is "terrible at golf and it drives me nuts because I am so vain."
Waterloo's fifth president sees himself as competitive: "not in a cutthroat way, but I like to do well." He smiles, a gleam in his eye. "The world ranking of this university is of great importance to me."
David Johnstons and his wife, Sharon enjoy getaways to their cottage at Lac Tremblant, Quebec.
His other self-observed flaws have to do with speed. "I'm impatient, and that's a weakness. I have a sense of urgency that I bring sometimes in an oppressive way into situations. I'm so conscious, there are only 24 hours in a day, and there are so many things to be done, and time's a-wasting." Ancillary to his impatience — beyond a penchant for collecting speeding tickets — is a worry that he sometimes makes decisions too quickly in his urge to move things forward, and that he has "a short attention span."
It's not surprising that a self-aware humility lives at the heart of David Lloyd Johnston, whose life journey has been shaped, as his eldest daughter Debbie observes, by his Canadianness: "He grew up poor in northern Ontario. He got his first job when he was nine, and by 11 he was working in a mechanic's garage. In many other countries, his future would be working in a coal mine or factory. There's no way a poor boy would have the chance to do great things in his life. But my dad was born in a country where doors can be opened irrespective of your socioeconomic background."
Johnston was born on June 28, 1941, in Sudbury, one of three children. His father Lloyd, with a Grade 10 education, worked in hardware sales and moved the family back to his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie when David was in grade school. Johnston's mother, Dorothy, grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and had attended university, "so she certainly encouraged us in school," Johnston says. "It was a bit of a surprise to my dad that my sister, brother, and I were all good students."
By high school, Johnston, in addition to getting top grades and working part-time, was involved "in every sport there was: baseball in summer, football in fall, and hockey in the winter." The possibility of attending the Ivy League Harvard came about because an alumnus of that university was seeking scholar-athletes and connected to David via a Harvard grad who worked at the insect laboratory in the Sault.
The offer and scholarship were a great opportunity, but Johnston could not have pursued it without "the help of a whole community," says his fifth and youngest daughter, Sam, a director with the Center for Social Innovation in Boston. For instance, Johnston would hitchhike to Toronto from Boston on school breaks and the mechanics at the garage where he had worked would find a car for him in Toronto and pay Johnston to drive it to Sault Ste. Marie. "That's left a mark on him and has had an impact on his work," Sam Johnston says. "A mechanic would care enough to find a way to get him home at Christmas."