Education
He attended primary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba, attending R. T. Alderman Junior High and graduating from Calgary's Lord Beaverbrook High School. His post-secondary education began with receiving a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Calgary in 1976, and continued with a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1978, an M.D. from McGill University in 1982, and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1998 as a Sloan Fellow. He received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Calgary while on orbit on July 8, 2009. Fellow ISS crewmember Koichi Wakata had the honor of placing the convocation cape on Thirsk, which was later removed due to it constantly floating up to his face. This event made Thirsk the first person ever to receive a university degree from space.
Read more about this topic: Robert Thirsk
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“There used to be housekeepers with more energy than sense—the everlasting scrubber; the over-neat woman. Since the better education of woman has come to stay, this type of woman has disappeared almost, if not entirely.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It’s fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)