Mohamed Lachemi’s long journey from an Algerian earthquake to engineering the future for Ryerson University. Andrea Gordon,
New Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi is filling the big shoes of beloved predecessor Sheldon Levy. But colleagues say he has ‘big feet’
It was just after lunchtime in October 1980 when the ground began to shake in the Algerian town of El Asnam. In the 25 seconds that followed, the earthquake buckled roads and collapsed buildings, sending dust and debris skyward and killing more than 4,000 people.
Thirty-six years later, its reverberations are being felt on the other side of the world in a most unlikely way. Mohamed Lachemi was 18 when the earthquake struck, an avid soccer player, the eldest of five children and a math whiz at the top of his class. At 1:24 p.m. he was inside a building in the centre of town. Racing outside less than a minute later, he discovered how lucky he’d been. It was one of the few structures still standing.
“When I ran out of the building I could see people fleeing, a lot of bodies under blocks,” recalls Lachemi, who rushed home to find his family unharmed.
Those moments provoked a question that would shape his life: why did the building he was inside stay upright while those beside it fell? He wanted to understand what would make structures and people safer.
The quest drove Lachemi to finish his last year of high school, even though it meant moving without his family to a city and a school that had escaped the destruction. It inspired him to earn three engineering degrees. And it led to a career researching and developing high-performance materials, including a durable form of concrete, to prevent the kind of scenes that haunted him.
This fall, it culminated in the top job at Ryerson University, where he was officially installed as the school’s ninth president after 18 years at the school. He took office as the new president in April, overseeing 42,000 students, 866 full-time faculty and 1,700 administrative staff.
“Engineering is about people,” says Lachemi, 54, from his 13th-floor office overlooking a campus entwined with Toronto’s downtown core. “It’s about enhancing quality of life for people.”
His ability to bridge science with humanity — and ambitious long-term goals for the school with daily reality of students — is what makes him a solid leader, say those who know him.
His journey reflects how “everything he does comes absolutely from a place of caring and heart rather than careerism or general ambition,” says Victoria Morton, a fourth-year media production student and vice-president of education with the Ryerson Students’ Union, who has come to know Lachemi over the years.
As if to drive home his modesty, Lachemi’s 17-year-old daughter Selma notes that when he was announced as president, “I found out on Twitter.”
Alife in three parts
Lachemi looks back on his 54 years with a civil engineer’s eye for structure. “I see it in three phases, 18 years each.” The first one begins in a village in the mountains of northwestern Algeria, where he was born in 1962 just after war ended 132 years of colonial rule by France. Lachemi remembers a childhood roaming outdoors on mountain paths, donkeys and cows dotting the landscape and hour after hour of pickup soccer.
“You’d go to open space, you’d play the whole day.”
He remains devoted to watching the English Premier League with his 20year-old son, Yasser, the eldest of his four children, as well as European and African soccer.
Lachemi’s father worked as a driver. Neither parent had access to schooling. Still, they passed along the lesson to their children: education opens doors.
Young Mohamed was the first in his family to attend school but in their town, there were none beyond elementary. So when he’d completed that, “the decision was to leave everything behind and move us to the next town,” he says. It was El Asnam, since renamed Chlef.
The earthquake marked the beginning of what Lachemi refers to as the second 18-year phase. He recalls the terror of the day that marked a turning point in his life calmly and factually. When it happened he was a month into his final year of high school, and national exams the following June would determine eligibility for university.
For the second time in his life, with his school destroyed and the city in chaos, Lachemi moved to pursue his education as his class of 22 was relocated to a school in another town. For months afterwards, loud noises would trigger panic and send the traumatized group sprinting outside together.
Many fellow students were brilliant, he says. But at the end of the school year, he was the only one to successfully complete the national exam, opening the door to a university education. “It was a very difficult year.” His first degree was in civil engineering from the University of Science and Technology of Oran. Pursuing post-grad studies meant earning a fellowship to leave the country. Algerian students raised speaking Arabic and French often chose France or Belgium. Lachemi, “an adventurer,” set his sights on Quebec.
He landed in Canada 30 years ago, “not speaking a single word of English,” in a group of about 20 Algerian students, and was soon enrolled in a master’s program in structural engineering at the University of Sherbrooke, where he went on to earn his doctorate.
Three decades later, memories of his own homesickness and culture shock reaffirm his commitment to ensuring Ryerson is a welcoming environment and destination of choice for international students.
In Sherbrooke, as part of a research team that developed reactive powder concrete (RPC) — a more durable and environmentally sustainable version of the construction material — Lachemi realized his dream of making structures safer. He helped design the world’s first structure to be made of the substance, a pedestrian bridge.
He was 36 and about to launch “phase three,” as he headed to Toronto with his wife and two young children to begin a career as a professor and academic leader at Ryerson — which so far has lasted 18 years.
In that period, “I have seen the transformation,” says Lachemi. “It’s important for us to keep the momentum.”
Replacing an academic star
When Sheldon Levy became president of Ryerson in 2005, one outside observer said the school had “put the puck in the net” by choosing the charismatic trailblazer who students quickly got to know as “Sheldon.”
Levy’s two five-year terms were a bold and heady time as the school made its imprint on Toronto and as a rising star among innovative post-secondary institutions.
Under his direction, Ryerson launched the Digital Media Zone, a business incubator for student startups and the cornerstone of Yonge-Dundas Square in the heart of downtown; a dazzling athletic complex and rink at the former Maple Leaf Gardens; and the showcase Student Learning Centre on Yonge St., eight floors of glass, panoramic views and modern space for work, meetings and leisure.
The university radiated energy. Student engagement soared, buoyed by Levy’s enthusiasm and down-to-earth presence at campus events. The school received the second-highest number of applications in Ontario last year and has the highest ratio of applicants per available spot.
Talk about Lachemi’s new role invariably leads to comments about the big shoes he has to fill. Joanne Dallaire’s response in her remarks at his recent installation ceremony seems to speak for many.
“Good thing he has big feet, and an even bigger heart,” said Dallaire, a traditional counsellor with Ryerson’s aboriginal student services.
Lachemi was a key player on Levy’s team, instrumental in forging partnerships such as iBest, which brings together Ryerson biomedical engineers and researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital to pioneer health-care products and techniques. He also initiated “zone learning,” an entrepreneurial approach to expanding the incubator mindset of the Digital
Media Zone to students across the university.
“My style is all about the team,” says Lachemi. “I rely a lot on collaboration and consultation … I want people to be recognized.” That approach combined with his knowledge of Ryerson’s culture and dynamics is an advantage as he makes the transition into the complex role of president, says Julie Cafley, a senior vice-president with the Ottawa think-tank Public Policy Forum.
It’s a job of “collaborative shared governance” that can be fraught, requiring careful balancing of many parties whose interests may compete, from students and faculty to board and donors, says Cafley, who recently completed a PhD on leadership in higher education.
Speaking style or personality is not as important as ability to build trust on campus, she adds. “Mohamed needs to be authentic to himself . . . focusing on his own leadership style and his own way forward.”
While building on the last decade’s successes, he will have to determine how he wants to make his mark, says Cafley. “And I think he’s well-placed for that.”
Lachemi’s road to the job — which paid Levy almost $398,000 in salary and benefits according to 2015 public records — was longer than usual. He was on the search committee that chose a replacement for Levy. But the deal with the person who signed on, widely rumoured to be Alan Shepard of Concordia but denied by him, fell through. Lachemi became interim president a year ago, was announced as the next president on March 31 and took office in April.
Those who have worked with him cite his quiet confidence, humility and ability to listen and see all sides. He works best one on one or in small groups, they say. And even during two interviews squeezed into a packed schedule with assistants watching the clock, Lachemi gave no hint of being rushed.
His manner is more formal than Levy’s, suits versus shirtsleeves, and in speeches, he isn’t inclined to go off script. But they share key priorities.
“We both put students at the centre of everything we do,” says Levy, now deputy minister at Ontario’s Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development. He says that trait is largely why he named Lachemi provost in 2013.
Levy notes his successor brings an engineer’s more purposeful mindset versus his own tendency to “throw the spaghetti on the fridge and see what sticks.”
Victoria Morton of the student union says he’s a president students see as an ally when it comes to new projects.
“Mohamed is definitely in the category of ‘I can’t wait to tell him my idea because I know it’s going to be heard and supported.’ ”
At meetings, he’s not the guy who works the room, she says, but those sitting beside him will be privy to the most insightful comments.
Lamya Amleh, an engineering professor, joined the faculty a few years after Lachemi. She says Lachemi’s roots as a professor, dean of engineering, Canada Research Chair in sustainable construction and later provost and vice-president academic mean he understands students, faculty, staff and academia’s inner workings.
She calls him a champion of equity and a promoter of women in engineering, who kept pushing her to apply for professorship. When Amleh approached him several years ago seeking help for a student, he acted quickly, and followed up a few months later, recalling the student’s name.
Former Ryerson English professor Randy Boyagoda recalls a coffee event he hosted a few years ago for students from across campus involved in zone learning. Boyagoda was director of zone learning and reported to Lachemi, then provost.
“It wasn’t that kind of razzle-dazzle exciting event, because that’s not his style and it needn’t be,” says Boyagoda, now principal of University of St. Michael’s College at the U of T. But there was “a real sense that Mohamed was talking to these students, hearing their interests and ideas and responding.”
Boyagoda also cites Lachemi’s commitment to his Muslim faith and his family as a powerful example of the importance of life beyond work.
“He loves family time,” says his daughter Soumaya, 19, including dominos, Scrabble and barbecuing lamb on Sundays.
And Lachemi knows all the words to his favourite family movie, The Lion King.
“Yeah, in English, French and Arabic,” chimes in her sister Selma.
Soumaya and Selma, along with their older brother, Yasser, 13-year-old sister, Tasmin, and mother, Amel, watched proudly as their father was celebrated by gowned dignitaries, staff, faculty and students at his Sept. 30 installation as president and vice-chancellor.
So far, there are no budding engineers in the family. Nor is there pressure to follow his path. Yasser is taking a gap year from studying history at Ryerson. Soumaya, who drives in with her dad every morning at 6:30 from their Mississauga home, is in her second year of interior design. Selma prefers social sciences and dropped high school math. “He’s open to everything,” says Tasmin. Soumaya says he never stops grilling her about what might improve school experience for her and her fellow students.
“His heart and soul is in Ryerson.”
The next 18
“I consider myself a global citizen,” says Lachemi. Technically, he’s a dual citizen of Canada and Algeria. But he’s fluent in three languages and has studied Spanish, was part of a research team in France where he met his wife while she was also visiting Paris, and was influenced from an early age by teachers and professors who came to Algeria from Europe and the Middle East.
That sensibility is part of his commitment to making Ryerson a sought-after choice for students around the world.
He’s quick to acknowledge the many people and factors that helped him get to the university: from his parents to his fellowships and scholarships and his mentors.
This fall, he announced a new fund for students who can’t afford to attend Ryerson, including young indigenous people, international students and those with disabilities.
“The idea came out of my own story,” he says of the fund, still in the early stages. “I was successful because I got help.”
His preliminary target is to raise $10 million and he is in the process of meeting potential donors and developing criteria.
Lachemi moves easily between expounding big-picture goals and the daily business of supporting students.
He wants Ryerson to be seen as “a global urban innovation university” with the surrounding city as a “living lab” and partner in everything from landscape and design to medical technology.
But he’s also conversant in details, citing priorities as mental health services, which have experienced an unprecedented demand at Ontario universities and colleges.
Last year, Ryerson added two counsellors to its roster of 17 or 18, says Lachemi. And this fall following the release of a province-wide survey showing the shortage of resources, 40 faculty and staff signed up for a workshop on how to recognize and help students who may be struggling with mental health.
On a warm October day, students cluster on the steps of the Student Learning Centre basking in sunshine, sipping coffee and tapping laptops as Lachemi arrives for a photo shoot.
As he walks through the lobby and strolls through the pedestrian mall at the centre of the campus, young students glance over at this imposing but gracious figure, some with recognition in their eyes.
It’s a typical 12-hour day for the president (not including regular evening events) and Lachemi can’t wait to talk about the Alumni Weekend he just attended, where he was tickled to meet someone from Ryerson’s first graduating class in 1951. “He came all the way from Ottawa!”
While he’s in demand, Lachemi doesn’t let that get in the way of showing off the architectural marvel that is the Student Learning Centre. It’s a Ryerson landmark that also welcomes visitors. “We don’t want to have walls,” he says. First stop is the sixth floor known as “The Beach,” a tiered and sunlit expanse that slopes towards a towering wall of glass and a view of the city. Then upstairs to “The Sky” on the eighth floor where he strolls, smiling, among students studying at desks and others gathered around tables.
In what seems a fitting scene, the president is taking pride in students and engineering, two pillars of his life.