CMU Community Tributes to Randy Pausch
It’s been a full week of mourning for Randy Pausch on this blog. In the meantime, the list of other topics to write about has started to pile up. There are updates to report on the status of the Alice Project. Also, there were a number of interesting meetings, including the CRA Board of Directors, the Snowbird Conference, the Google Faculty Summit, and the Microsoft Faculty Summit. Interesting things happened at all of these events, well worth reporting on here. And, as always, there are some notable events and activities by people in or around the department to mention.
But, I’d like to hold off on all of that for just a bit longer, so that I can send one more note about Randy Pausch. This time, I’d like to do this mainly for our students who are still away from campus for the summer, and also for our alumni and friends who have spent time here in the past but are now far away.
People everywhere, of course, are finding ways to pay tribute to Randy Pausch. The New York Times health columnist, Tara Parker-Pope, put together a very nice tribute web page, with links to a lot of great pages I had no idea existed. Parker-Pope’s page was sent to me by Jeffrey Zaslow, in the aftermath of our joint interview for the BBC Radio 4 obituary show, The Last Word, which aired yesterday. Over at Wired Magazine, a comparison is made between the outpouring of grief over Randy and the mourning over Rudolph Valentino’s death in 1926.
But what about here at home? Many members of the Carnegie Mellon campus community are paying their own tributes. The Fence, for one, now has a tribute to Randy Pausch. Here is the front view and the rear view, via GigaPan. (Like many universities, CMU has an object on campus where fraternities, sororities, and other organizations can paint messages for all to see. “The Fence“, as we call it, occupies the center of campus, and normally when a group paints the fence it has to camp out overnight in order to protect the new message.) I wonder how and when this will be painted over.
The book by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow, The Last Lecture, will be given to all incoming CMU freshmen. Jeffrey tells me that he will come to campus to speak at freshman orientation. The students will be broken up into discussion groups of a dozen or so, each group joined by a faculty member to discuss some of the ideas in the book. I’m looking forward to participating in this, as are many of my faculty colleagues. I suspect similar things will be going on at schools around the world.
A somewhat obscure fact about the book is that there is a “lost chapter” entitled, The Bridge. This chapter was dropped from the book before publication. You can read it here. A quote:
The symbolism of this bridge is just amazing to me because I’ve spent my career trying to be a bridge. My goal was always to connect people from different disciplines, while helping them find their way over brick walls.
The symbolism that Randy is referring to here is that the bridge connects the Purnell Center for the Arts (the home of the much-heralded School of Drama) to the still-in-construction Gates Hillman Center, and specifically the Gates Center for Computer Science, the future home of the Computer Science Department. This physical connection reflects the intellectual and artistic connection between the arts and computing that Randy worked so hard to develop.
Guy Blelloch (Professor of CS, and faculty lead on the Gates Hillman Center building project) has put together a web site with current photos of the Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge. The bridge is still under construction, with the concrete for the walkway just recently poured. The architecture team has been working exceptionally hard at designing a fitting memorial. Guy and I, along with several others connected to the building project, traveled to Boston to see preliminary design concepts for the bridge, just two days before Randy passed away. I can’t reveal much here yet. (We don’t yet have a handle on the funding for this, and anyway the team would like to present some concepts to Jai Pausch and family before going more public.) But it is apparent already that the footbridge will be utterly, totally, unique, incorporating tremendous design and, very likely, advanced computing technology literally every step of the way. Watch the Gates Center Blog for more details to be revealed in the near future.
Individuals on campus have also found ways to pay tribute. Cleah Schlueter, for example is raising pledges for Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. She (and, I suspect, many others) will be participating in a 5K walk in a Pittsburgh suburb on August 17, with the raised funds going to support research on pancreatic cancer.
Tributes to Randy Pausch are being made all over the world. I am hoping that this article gives those of you who have a special connection to Carnegie Mellon a sense of what is happening here.
Peter Lee @ August 2, 2008
[…] físicamente con nosotros, no significa que no podamos continuar aprendiendo de su obra. En el blog del Departamento de Computer Science de CMU mencionan varios enlaces que merecen […]
Hi -
I never met Randy, but I once heard that it is possible to have a mentor, without having the luxury of meeting them. I feel this way about Randy.
I heard about this lecture about a day after youtube put it up. Drudge ran it, then the rest was history.
As a corporate compliance director, and a home school teacher, I was in a bit of a haze last fall. I still am, truth be told, but my sense of direction was askew. My moral compass was working perfectly, but my life compass could not find magnetic North.
The bit about not placing a bar to low for his students, rang true. So much so, that my student took First Place at a competition held at a major university on the West Coast. Additionally, I myself always felt like someone that “minded the gap.” Ive been fairly successful in bridging gaps in several emotional communities and I am fairly proud of it.
I and my student looked at Randy’s update page on Wednesday, prior to his death. We spoke about Pancreatic Cancer, and Cancer in general. Something we did on a weekly basis. We were deeply saddened about his loss, but knew that he at least lived his life.
The home schooled students family lost there beloved puppy that Friday morning. Flying 500 miles and driving 1200 miles back to the house left me exhausted on Saturday. Keeping a promise to do Universal Studios on Sunday, was difficult at best.
Needless to say, I passed the carnival section of Universal Studios and heard a voice. So, I put down 40.00 bucks and won every possible large stuffed animal they had to offer. Football players, some racer stuffed animals and then a few frogs.
Somehow, creating those moments made all the difference. I guess its about creating nice moments in life.
Thanks for the lovely update. I’d love to contribute to the bridge.
tgc
Thomas,
Thank you for your kind thoughts. Your story is touching, right down to winning all the stuffed animals.
As for contributing to the bridge, I hope I didn’t inadvertently give the impression that the bridge is in danger of not being built. The bridge, in fact, is well under construction and will definitely be completed. I have no doubt that it will be a fitting memorial to Randy Pausch. What is unknown, however, is the final design, and this is because we don’t have a clear budget for the bridge. How the bridge turns out will be dependent on the financial resources available, and this is currently a moving target. We know that some design concepts are likely to be too expensive, but others are not quite clear to us yet.
Having said that, I am sure that contributions would be very much appreciated. There are two ways to do that. One is to go to http://www.cmu.edu/giving/pausch. On the web page, make sure to select “Randy Pausch Honorary Fund”. If the gift is specifically for the Bridge (as opposed to his Alice Project), then write in the comment box, “For the Pausch Memorial Footbridge”. Alternatively, you can call Mark Dorgan, Principal Giving Advisor, 412-268-8576.
Thank you again for your thoughts.
Just passing along the information that a webcam has been set up allowing the construction of the Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge to be viewed remotely.
You can access the webcam at: http://128.2.53.186/view/index.shtml
If the webcam is too busy, you can click on the snapshot button on the top right corner to get a static image.
alex
Yes, we set up the webcam a few days ago, so that the Pausch family could view the bridge during its construction. Since the webcam only allows a small number of simultaneous connections, we would appreciate it if users would avoid leaving a connection open for long periods. In other words, when you are done viewing the bridge, please close your browser or point it to another web page.
Thanks.
This is a very informative post about cancer.My niece is still suffering from side effects of a pancreatic Cancer she had after suffering from Stomach cancer.Thanks for such a useful post about
cancer.
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