Inspirational IU professor dies at 60

In a large, inconspicuous box covered in flower wallpaper, messages of support and concern accumulated precluding the death of IU psychology professor, Bob Weiskopf. \nHundreds of cards were left in the box, said James Brown, an academic advisor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Those cards meant so much to Weiskopf in the months leading up to his death, Brown said, which occurred on June 25 in Weiskopf’s Bloomington home.\nWeiskopf, who according to James Craig, a chancellor’s professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, was easily the department’s most popular instructor.\n“He was a great asset to the department,” Brown said. “A lot of students claimed psych as their major solely because of his 450-person lecture for non-majors.”\nBrown said Weiskopf was popular at teaching that he almost always filled 8 a.m. lecture classes. He went on to say that sometimes students joked that they couldn’t keep up with taking notes because they were focused on his animated lectures and off-the-wall teaching.\nWeiskopf began having problems with reading and simple calculations back in September 2006, said his daughter Emma Weiskopf. After begging him to go to the emergency room and get his problem checked out, Weiskopf finally submitted. The diagnosis came back; he had brain cancer.\nAfter teaching for about 25 years in the department, Craig said Weiskopf was consistently a favorite teacher year-in and year-out. \n“Some students took every single class that he taught,” Craig said. \nWeiskopf was on the Student Choice Award for Outstanding Faculty list in 1992 and 1997. His son, Dan Weiskopf, said his father’s greatest success was his teaching, and he was proud of the numerous awards he won as a result. \nWeiskopf had a great enthusiasm for learning, but an even greater passion for passing on that enthusiasm to his students. \n“He made you feel like you were part of a group working together, even if that group was a giant lecture hall,” said graduate student Lyuba Bobova.\nPerhaps an even more surprising way he engaged students was by pretending to be a patient and acting out the disorders the students were learning about, Craig said. \n“He would demonstrate a patient’s qualities long enough that it would bother the students,” he said. “But he would say, if you’re working with someone with that disorder, then they can’t just snap out of it.”\nEmma said that the cards Weiskopf received only affirmed the great love his students had for him. \n“It doesn’t seem likely that we will be able to find one person that can do everything that he did,” Craig said. “He’s just not replaceable.”\nA memorial for Bob Weiskopf will take place Saturday at 1 p.m. in Woodburn Hall 100, a room where he spent many years teaching psych courses, Craig said. \nThe Weiskopf Award for the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant has been established in his name to honor one student in the department annually. Donations can be made to the IU Foundation, P.O. Box 500, Bloomington, IN 47402.