Richard Roy Boedeker died of natural causes on 8 April 2015 in Edwardsville, Illinois. Born in St. Louis, Missouri on 8 April 1933, he was a reited Physics Professor Emeritus at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville(SIUE). Richard was a graduate of St. Louis High School and earned his Ph.D from St. Louis University in 1959. He taught at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville from 1962-‐1999, during which time he was awarded the Teaching Excellence Award in 1973 and 1979. He was recognized as an Outstanding Educator of America in 1972. He had articles published in The Physics Teacher 30,502(1992) entitled “Teaching Precision in introductory physics”; in the American Journal of Physics 51,859(1983) entitled “Procedure for written test follow-‐ups in large sections of university physics”, and also in the AJP 46, 643 (1978) entitled ”Report of the use of follow-‐ups in large sections of university physics.”. A fellow colleague at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville shared a story about Prof. Boedeker: When I was a student at SIUE in the 70s I was a music major who decided to switch to engineering. My first physics class almost made me change my mind. Then for my second physics class I had Dr. Boedeker. He was truly a great teacher, one of the best, but he was not easy! If you did well, you earned it and learned it. I went on to get my PhD and have taught at SIUE for 25 years now, and am the Graduate Program Director for the ECE department. If not for Dr. Boedeker I may not have stayed in engineering. Being a teacher allows you to affect the lives of so many, and Dr. Boedeker certainly did in a very positive way. His former Physics department head at SIUE said: “In all my years at SIUE he was not only a colleague but a friend, and most important a Mentor.” And in my case, when I began high school physics teaching in the early 80s, I asked Dr. Boedeker if I could sit in on his night classes at SIUE to improve my teaching techniques and he was very gracious in allowing me to do so, and provided me with many teaching tips and helpful strategies over my early years of teaching to help me improve my classroom teaching. He was always willing to help me and any other teacher or student who asked him for help, and took time to help myself and many others in any way that he could. He shared many teaching materials with me over the years and answered many questions I had in my years of teaching. He even published copies of his excellent lecture materials for his students and paid for the cost out of his funds and some grants that he was able to obtain at no charge to the physics department at SIUE. No matter what other physics classes he was asked to teach at SIUE in his 37 years there, he was always given a large lecture class of the calculus based freshman physics class every semester at SIUE. This was because the department knew that he was an excellent lecturer and teacher of physics to the students at SIUE. He worked extremely hard at his profession and was always trying to find ways to improve his teaching methods in physics, especially at the freshman level. He was an exceptional mentor for me and had a great influence on my teaching methods and knowledge of physics. I will always be indebted to him for all that he did for me; for so many of the students he taught and for the other teachers who were fortunate enough to know him and ask his advice in ways to improve their teaching methods.
