Sep 18, 2007 11:31 pm US/Eastern
Ailing CMU Professor Teaches Final Lecture
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―
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CMU Professor Randy Pausch, 47, only has a few months left to live.
KDKA
It's not often that a college professor receives thunderous applause and takes a bow after his lecture, but at Carnegie Mellon University Tuesday night, it was no ordinary class.
Professor Randy Pausch, 47, only has a few months to live. He has pancreatic cancer.
"There's a good and bad thing about having a lead time on dying young. It's nice to make the most of it," he said.
Pausch gave a touching lecture to a packed lecture hall of students and colleagues, including Andy Van Dam, the professor who inspired him when he was a student at Brown University.
"It's an incredible loss to all of us, to the community, to have a brilliant guy like this and a guy who has so much to give, so much energy, be forced to leave prematurely," Van Dam said.
Pausch is trying to make the most of the time he has left.
"I'm sorry I won't be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad. I can't change that fact," he said. "So, I've tried to do everything I could with the time I've had and the time I have to help other people."
In his life, Pausch bridged the gap between two different cultures at CMU – the computer geeks and the theatre majors. Now CMU will build a pedestrian bridge between the computer science school and the arts department. It will be named after Pausch and that brings joy to his wife, Jai.
"I look forward to the time when my children are grown and we come back to the campus and we walk across that bridge together," she said.
Besides his wife, Pausch will leave behind an infant daughter and two sons, ages 3 and 5.
His lecture was titled "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." It was videotaped because it was a message to his children – a lesson they can receive from their father years after he's gone.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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