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June 09, 2008, 03:57 PM ET
'Wall Street Journal' Columnist: Dying Professor Told His Life Story on a Bike
Randy Pausch’s “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University last year has inspired other colleges to ask their professors to also deliver last lectures—hypothetical ones—according to Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Zaslow made the remarks to college leaders at The Chronicle’s Executive Leadership Forum today.
Mr. Zaslow wrote a book with Mr. Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon computer-science professor, about the latter’s life. The professor has become an international celebrity for a talk he gave in September at the university about his life. The talk was billed as his last lecture because Mr. Pausch had discovered he was dying of pancreatic cancer. The Wall Street Journal made a video of the lecture and it instantly became a hit on the Web. Then Mr. Pausch was featured on ABC’s “Oprah” and “20/20.”
Mr. Pausch fed Mr. Zaslow information for the book while riding his bicycle, Mr. Zaslow revealed. Mr. Pausch donned a headset and spoke to Mr. Zaslow over a couple months in sessions that totaled 53 hours.
Mr. Zaslow also revealed that Mr. Pausch’s health has deteriorated sharply, and that his kidneys and heart are failing.
In honor of Mr. Pausch, Carnegie Mellon plans to name a footbridge after him that will connect the university’s Gates Center for Computer Science with the Purnell Center for the Arts. Hilary Robinson, a university dean, said the bridge symbolizes Mr. Pausch’s commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to computer-science education.—Andrea L. Foster
Categories: Teaching
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