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.
