Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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What were your early years like?

I grew up in Washington, D.C., a child of the ’50s and ’60s. So when I started school, the schools were segregated by law. After the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Washington immediately integrated the schools the next year. A tracking system was put into place, and we were tested in the sixth grade. Based on that, I was placed in an accelerated program. I ended up being my high school valedictorian.

I was pretty quiet in many ways but always assertive. When I was young, I used to organize the kids on the block to actually sweep the sidewalk before the street-sweeping truck came. It just seemed like the thing to do. I don’t know why they would do it, frankly, but somehow they did it. I would say to them, “Why have the streets clean if the sidewalks aren’t?”

I also did experiments as a kid. I started with collecting bees in our yard and doing little environmental and dietary experiments with them. I always tried to let them go before they died. I never wanted a dead insect collection.

Tell me about your parents.

My father started working after the 11th grade because his father had passed away. He was always mechanically gifted. My father was in World War II — in a segregated unit, and he was at Normandy. He ended up getting a Bronze Star because in the battle, he was able to repair the amphibious landing vehicles that the troops came in on. The rudders kept breaking. Other people had tried different things, but they would come apart, and he figured out a particular way to splice cables that worked. That saved a lot of lives.

He used to work on projects all the time, and I spent a lot of time with him when I was young. My mother was the one who made sure we all were really good in the language arts. She taught us to read before we went to kindergarten.

Any favorite family expressions?

My father always said, “Aim for the stars so you can reach the treetops.” Then he always said that the way you get your next best job is to do as well as you can in the one you’re in.

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To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.