Randy Pausch Bridge by multiple artists

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The late Professor Randy Pausch was an inspiration to the world. After viewing his Last Lecture video, or reading his book you can’t help looking at things a bit differently. What a tremendous loss for his family, friends, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and the world when he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2008.

This professor had a profound impact on us all. CMU chose to build a memorial to him on their campus, and we couldn’t imagine a nicer one than the Randy Pausch Bridge.

During the day is doesn’t appear to be exceptional. It’s a nice enough looking pedestrian walkway, but you wouldn’t really think twice about it as you crossed between the Purnell Center and Gates and Hillman Center buildings. At night though... well that’s a different story. At night the bridge comes alive in ever changing colors. Using more than 7000 LEDs, the computer generated patterns were designed to represent the metaphors that Professor Pausch used in The Last Lecture. There’s a description of each of them on a CMU web page. It is a beautiful tribute to a beautiful human being. We hope the students that use it never forget the man that inspired it.

Walking to the Sky by Jonathan Borofsky

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This is a copy of a sculpture installed in NYC in 2004. It was inspired by a story that the artist's father told him when he was a child about a father and son visiting a friendly giant in the sky. Mr Borofsky is an alumni of Carnegie Melon University and this sculpture is placed prominently on CMU’s campus. In a CMU press release in 2006, Jonathan Borafsky is quoted as saying that the sculpture is a celebration of the human potential for discovering who we are and where we need to go. Walking to the Sky is a portrait of all of humanity rising upward from the earth to the heavens above – striving into the future with strength and determination. Ultimately, this sculpture is a symbol for our collective search for wisdom and awakened consciousness.