2020 Retiring Faculty

David Johnson

Allen Trimble Professor of Botany/Microbiology
(1989-2020)

“The trip to the Smokies was amazing! I can’t believe all the plants we saw and learned. I don’t think anything can stop Dr. Johnson, not even the shutdown of the entire United States government!” (from a student in fall 2013).

Indeed, nothing has stopped Dr. David Johnson or his research collaborator and wife, Dr. Nancy Murray, since their arrival at OWU in 1989. For over 30 years, Dr. Johnson has been a favorite professor of countless students, teaching introductory classes in botany and organismal biology and upper-level classes on plant biodiversity, plant morphology, the biology of the fungi, and tropical biology. His exemplary skill in the classroom earned him both of OWU’s highest honors for teaching: the Shankland Teaching Award (2000) and the Welch Meritorious Teaching Award (2015).

An avid field biologist, Johnson has excelled at leading field trips, including the annual excursion to the Great Smoky Mountains to share the incredible diversity of plants in this unique environment and to Costa Rica as part of the Tropical Biology Travel-Learning Course. Johnson has been an inspiration not only to his students but also to his colleagues, embodying the teacher-scholar model to which all faculty at OWU aspire. He is a top scholar as indicated by his service as Editor-in-Chief of Systematic Botany Monographs, the leading journal in his field, and is a world authority on a key tropical plant family that he and Murray have studied for decades.

Johnson has traveled extensively — 21 countries and counting — and earned two Fulbright Fellowships from the U.S. Department of State, allowing him to travel and collaborate with scholars around the world. Johnson and Murray have formally identified more than 80 species never before known to science and published 66 peer-reviewed articles, with more currently in progress. His scholarly accomplishments earned him the Welch Award for Scholarly or Artistic Achievement from OWU in 2016.

In addition to his teaching and scholarly excellence, Johnson has been a fixture of service on campus, serving many terms on the Faculty Personnel Committee and the Executive Committee of the Faculty, and as Director of the OWU Jason Swallen Herbarium. He has served as a member of five Ph.D. examining committees at universities in The Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Brazil, and as a reviewer for numerous journals and grant panels, regularly giving back to his greater scholarly community.

Johnson continues to work toward completing a monograph of the Annonaceae, the authoritative work on this important tropical plant family.

It truly seems that nothing, including retirement, can stop Dr. Johnson.