Robert Perkoski, teaching assistant professor in the School of Computing and Information (SCI) who spent two decades as director of Undergraduate Information Sciences, died Nov. 8, 2023, at 69.
Recalled Kelly Shaffer, department manager for Informatics and Networked Systems and Perkoski’s colleague since 2006: “He was the most adamant about: we should always talk to our students to find out what they want from a degree program or from the school. … If it was extra work, it didn’t matter. The focus was on helping students get the most out of their degree. Let’s think about pedagogy in a different way. What does the student need from this? He would always be the voice of the student (in faculty discussions). That was always his first and most important focus, on what students needed to be successful.”
As part of that focus, Perkoski served on hundreds of his school’s committees on undergraduate education and advising.
“He was also part of the school and the department’s work to make sure the curriculum was updated on a regular basis and doing a lot of research — What was Penn State doing? What was Syracuse doing?” Shaffer said. “He represented the continuum of students in information sciences,” knowing them from orientation to graduation.
Born Oct. 5, 1954, and nicknamed “Perks,” Perkoski earned his B.A. in psychology from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, in 1976; his M.A. in education from Slippery Rock University in 1981; his M.S. in information science from Pitt in 1990 and an Ed.D. here in higher education management through the School of Education in 2017.
By the time he became a Pitt alumnus twice over he had long been working here. He began his career as student services administrator at Thiel College in Greenville, Pa. (1980-81), moving to become an education specialist at the nonprofit Community Action Pittsburgh 1(981-1982), and then joined Pitt as a placement counselor (1984-1990), advising students on their career plans.
He then rose to become director of Placement and Career Services (1990-1999), then moving to what was then the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications as an adjunct faculty member for a year before serving as director of the Undergraduate Program in Information Science in what was then called the School of Information Sciences beginning in 2000.
He taught many students through his courses: Introduction to Information Systems and Society, Human Centered Systems, Data Analysis, Analysis of Information Systems, Database Management Concepts and Applications. He mentored many students as well, via independent study courses in Information Science, and continued to advise students.
In addition, he helped to redesign the Bachelor of Science in Information Science curriculum in 2019 and to develop the Bachelor of Science in Computational Social Science and the minor in Information Science. He also aided new faculty and part-time instructors within his department.
That included recruiting Dmitriy Babichenko from the School of Medicine to join the computing faculty. “He was a very good mentor when I first started teaching full time,” Babichenko said. “He was always very good with students. He managed to take the driest material and make it entertaining.”
The pair collaborated on the design of several classes and became friends outside of Pitt. Babichenko recalled that Perkoski’s garage was a great place from which to borrow just about any power tool from his collection: “He would have these tools in the original box, never used.”
Babichenko took over Perkoski’s database management class when Perkoski died. “When I showed up,” Babichenko said, “one of the students actually brought flowers in Bob's memory and two students cried. That showed that he was actually loved by students.”
“Bob is one of those people who was so sociable; he had the best stories to tell,” recalled Kelly Shaffer. “He had his incredible breadth of interests, from music to the latest technology.” While finishing his doctoral thesis here, she said, he was dissatisfied with the reference-tracking abilities of writing software, so he simply designed a new software system for himself.
“He was very funny to the point where your stomach hurts because you are laughing so hard,” she said. “He constantly reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously.
He is survived by his sister, Terri Tunick and her husband, Steve Tunick; niece Rachael Tunick Grometer; nephew David Alan Tunick; great-niece Nora June Grometer; and great-nephew Henry Robert Grometer.
His family has established the Robert R. Perkoski Memorial Fund at SCI to provide undergraduate students with the education and resources they need to enter the world with a mastery of technology to solve societal problems. Contributions may be made online at giveto.pitt.edu/perkoskimemorial, or contact Terri Taylor, director of development, at territaylor@pitt.edu.
— Marty Levine