Nassif Ghoussoub, a faculty rep-
resentative on the
UBC Board of Gov-
ernors, was also a member of that
selection committee—and when he
saw Gupta's resumé on the pile, he
says, "I thought it was presumptu-
ous, again." Gupta has never held an
administrative post at a university
(beyond being
CEO of Mitacs, Gupta
served as a professor of computer
science at
UBC); how could he imag-
ine leaping into so prominent a role?
But then Ghoussoub remembered
who he was dealing with, and imme-
diately started campaigning for his
friend. "I declared my conflict—abso-
lutely—but it didn't stop me from
singing his praises," Ghoussoub
says. "Arvind is a man of vision—and
this is not some poetic thing. He is
visionary and pragmatic. He is a
mathematician in the true sense of
the word. He sees details and pat-
terns…. He sees where things can
go wrong. No one will run circles
around Arvind."
o, what will Gupta do
at
UBC? When asked,
the 52-year-old checks
off the major items
in a resolute, orderly
way. He is passionate about
UBC's
research mission ("We must rein-
vest—in research faculty, in gradu-
ate students and in undergraduate
research"). He's focused on skills
training, but not at the risk of edu-
cational breadth ("We must gain a
deeper understanding of educa-
tional and skills needs, short-term
and long-term. And we want to do
this in the context that we are edu-
cators, fostering a hunger to learn,
think, question and debate"). He is
attuned to the needs of
UBC Okana-
gan ("We must use our two-campus
structure to create different learn-
ing environments in the context of
the
UBC standards of excellence").
And he is sensitive to the opportu-
nities and complexities of living in
so multicultural a community ("We
want to ensure that
UBC is an envi-
ronment that celebrates a diversity
of opinions, welcomes respectful
debate, doesn't shy away from
tackling the tough socio-economic-
40 BCBusiness September 2014
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