Strangway helped bring UBC onto the world stage
Quest University founder and former NASA geophysics chief dead at 82
David Strangway, who led two top Canadian universities through expansion programs before founding the first private secular university in Canada, has died. He was 82.
Strangway, whose career included a stint as NASA’s chief of geophysics in the early 1970s, during which he developed metallurgy projects for the Apollo space missions, was president of the University of B.C. for 12 years between 1985 and 1997. During that time he oversaw a major campus building program and was credited with extending the university’s international reputation from a regional institution to one with worldwide connections.
Strangway was also president emeritus of the University of Toronto.
But his efforts in trying to create a new private university in Squamish in the late 2000s with a different style of teaching also earned him enduring praise. It took nearly a decade for Strangway to build Quest University Canada and to convince the province to accredit it.
He imagined a liberal-arts program that would engage and inspire students, and transform them into global citizens.
“So often today, people are becoming excessively specialized too early in their careers and their lives, in a world in which there is an incredible breadth of problems and issues and opportunities,” Strangway said in a 2007 interview with The Vancouver Sun.
Today, the university stands as a legacy to Strangway’s determination, Quest president Peter Englert said in a phone interview.
“He saw within the framework of the research university there was an opportunity to improve significantly undergraduate education, to create an environment in which students could learn more within subject disciplines,” Englert said. “We feel very strongly that we are on David Strangway’s pathway to the future.”
Strangway, born in Angola in 1932 to Canadian missionary parents, moved to Canada at age 20 to attend U of T, from which he received his PhD in physics.
Jack Lee, a former Sun reporter who got to know Strangway during his term as founding president of Quest, said he was such a gifted geophysicist that NASA recruited him first to examine lunar samples, and later as chief of the geophysics branch.
“NASA turned to him to do the metallurgy on the moon rocks. Every geophysicist wanted that job, but they reached out and pulled him in,” Lee said.
In between teaching at the University of Toronto and his stint with NASA, Strangway also taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1997, after he retired from UBC, the Canadian government hired Strangway as chairman of the Canada Foundation for Innovation to strengthen research and technology capabilities of Canadian universities, colleges and research hospitals. Over six years, he saw more than $2.7 billion invested into Canadian institutions, Lee said.
Premier Christy Clark said Strangway wielded enormous influence and responsibility for advancing education in Canada.
“Men of David Strangway’s calibre do not come along every day,” Clark said in a statement. “David’s tenure at UBC is widely recognized as a turning point, transforming the university into a world-leading centre of research, development and learning. For his contributions to UBC and Canada, we owe David an enormous debt of gratitude. He will be missed.”
Santa Ono, UBC’s new president, said in a statement that Strangway “provided the exemplary leadership that enabled UBC to advance from being a provincially recognized university to a world-renowned institution.”
He said Strangway, UBC’s 10th president, raised the university’s profile, particularly in Asia.
“Among many achievements, Dr. Strangway spearheaded what was then Canada’s largest fundraising campaign for a university, and he enhanced UBC’s research excellence through the Networks of Centres of Excellence,” Ono said.”
In 1996, Strangway was made an officer of the Order of Canada. The following year he became the first non-Korean to receive the Republic of Korea’s First Order of Civil Merit.
He is survived by his wife Alice, a son and two daughters.
Men of David Strangway’s calibre do not come along every day … we owe David an enormous debt of gratitude.