Robert “Bob” Schultz, Professor of Civil and Construction Engineering recently retired after 56 years of teaching surveying at Oregon State University. First of all, thank you Bob for all that you accomplished, for your mentoring of thousands of students and for your dedication to the surveying profession.
I had the great pleasure of speaking with Bob a couple of times. Somehow we quickly figured out that we were both WPI Civil Engineering alums and that my mentor Frank Defalco and Bob were good friends.
I did a Google search and came across the following tribute. This explains a lot about the man,
A university such as WPI has seen many great athletes in well over a century of organized intercollegiate athletics, but very few have the distinction of earning 12 varsity letters for the Crimson and Gray. One member of the exclusive group is Bob Schultz.
Bob established himself in his hometown of Worcester well before his arrival on Boynton Hill. He was a three-sport, four-year standout at South High School and during his senior year received the Main South American Legion Post 341 Student Athlete Award.
Success followed him to WPI, where he was a valuable member of the football, basketball, and baseball teams. He enjoyed a particularly outstanding hard-nosed career in basketball, where as a senior, he captained the 1954-55 squad.
“A referee once told me he never had to worry about whistling a jump ball when Schultz went for a loose ball,” noted Hall of Fame coach Merl Norcross. “Schultz was always going to end up with the ball.”
Bob played a significant role on the undefeated 1954 football team. He teamed with Hank Nowick and George Strom to form a talented group of ends.
In WPI baseball, he anchored the middle of the lineup while playing left field during an era that saw a large hill in that terrain. During his senior year, the team won a school-best 10 games, a mark that stood for decades.
“Bob Schultz was the quintessential overachiever and hustler,” commented classmate and fellow Hall of Famer Pete Horstmann. “He was a player who gave 110 percent every practice, every game. He was highly respected by teammates and coaches alike as an ultimate team player. Bob was hard-nosed and tough all the way.”
Bob was also active in campus life. A member of Skull and Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, he graduated from WPI with a degree in civil engineering. After serving as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he returned to WPI to earn his master’s in civil engineering in 1960.
In 1962, Bob began a long and distinguished career as a professor of civil engineering at Oregon State University. It took him just eight years to move from assistant, to associate, to full professor-a position he still holds today. His fields of specialization include civil engineering, surveying and mapping, geodesy, photogrammetry, and boundary law. He has won countless prestigious academic awards, including the Moser Award, the Lloyd Carter Award, and the Bressler Senior Faculty Teaching Award.
He remains involved in athletics, currently in his 45th year of officiating Oregon High School football. A noted Oregon High basketball official for nearly two decades, he has officiated at six state championship games between the two sports. Bob was married in 1965 to Worcester native, Connie Galkowski; they have four children, Anne Marie, John, Georgeanne, and Mary-Jo..
If you knew Bob, perhaps you would like to leave a comment. I will be sure to share them with him.
