During the lecture, Pausch was upbeat and humorous, alternating between wisecracks, insights on computer science and engineering education, advice on building multi-disciplinary collaborations, working in groups and interacting with other people, offering inspirational life lessons, and performing push-ups on stage. He also commented on the irony that the "Last Lecture" series had recently been renamed as "Journeys", saying, "I thought, damn, I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it."[15] After Pausch finished his lecture, Steve Seabolt, on behalf of Electronic Arts—which is now collaborating with CMU in the development of Alice 3.0[20]—pledged to honor Pausch by creating a memorial scholarship for women in computer science, in recognition of Pausch's support and mentoring of women in CS and engineering.[9]
CMU president Jared Cohon spoke emotionally of Pausch's humanity and called his contributions to the university and to education "remarkable and stunning".[21] He then announced that CMU will celebrate Pausch's impact on the world by building and naming after Pausch a raised pedestrian bridge[22] to connect CMU's new Computer Science building and the Center for the Arts, symbolizing the way Pausch linked those two disciplines. Brown University professor Andries van Dam followed Pausch's last lecture with a tearful and impassioned speech praising him for his courage and leadership, calling him a role model.[21][23][24]
The Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge was dedicated on October 30, 2009, with Jai, Dylan, Logan and Chloe Pausch cutting the ribbon.
The Last Lecture [edit]
The Disney-owned publisher Hyperion paid $6.7 million for the rights to publish a book about Pausch called The Last Lecture, co-authored by Pausch and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow.[25] The book became a New York Times best-seller on April 28, 2008.[26] The Last Lecture expands on Pausch's speech. The book's first printing had 400,000 copies, and it has been translated into 46 languages. It has spent more than 85 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and there are now more than 4.5 million copies in print in the U.S. alone. Despite speculation that the book would be made into a movie, Pausch had denied these rumors, stating that "there's a reason to do the book, but if it's telling the story of the lecture in the medium of film, we already have that."[27]
