A Tribute to Rob A Reilly

View Rob A Reilly's Obituary

"No one can escape their destiny. From the earth we come and to the earth we shall return, so is the divine will."

"We were shocked to learn of the passing on Tuesday May 21, 2024 of our colleague, friend and mentor to chapters and to some of us, Dr. Robert A. Reilly."

"A volunteer and workaholic, Rob as we called him, spared no effort, until his last breath, to serve the community in which he had lived. The local Lanesboro community, as well as the wider IEEE family, particularly the IEEE Education Society, for which he had been Chapter Chair since 2003, Secretary, President (2011-2012) and Director of IEEE Division VI (2015-2016). Lastly, he was awarded the status of President Emeritus of IEEE Education Society."

Many of us in the IEEE family had no idea of Rob's faltering health and weakened vision when we received replies to our e-mails from a device he had skillfully developed with the help of Mary, his companion, in order to better ensure his volunteer work with our members: "Despite his failing eyesight and not being able to drive Rob pushed on with magnifying glass in hand and me as his chauffeur."

Open to the global world and keen to contribute to the consideration of inclusion and diversity, as a tireless and inveterate humanist, Rob humbly often said to anyone who would listen: "Who am I, the white American male living in the United States, to dictate to my friends, comrades and collaborators from many backgrounds, how to act for their own good and on behalf of their respective communities?" 

For the IEEE Education Society, our colleague Rob Reilly was a well-kept secret. Some of us who had been his companions on long journeys to many corners of the world knew that Rob drew his energy from his glorious past as a disciplined U.S. military serviceman and medal-winning Judo athlete who attained "the rank of 6th degree Black Belt and was inducted into the Judo Hall of Fame in the year 2000". So, to better serve the global world as a volunteer. During his trips to different parts of the world, he not only left his footprints in our chapters, but hundreds of stamps in his passports. Rob shared his collections on his personal home page on his footprints across continents from far east to South America.

Many of us who had the good fortune to know Dr. Robert A. Reilly had heard him use some of his leitmotifs to encourage perseverance and volunteerism, including: "We too can win the Nobel Prize", which was the subject of many of his speeches. This was also the case during our preliminary meetings in preparation for the very first standard on smart online laboratories developed by the IEEE Education Society. Rob was one of the three initiators and members of the IEEE Education Society Standards Committee in 2010.

Another of Rob's leitmotifs was "pedagogy". His academic training, culminating in a PhD thesis defended in 1997 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst entitled "Transforming the paradigm for crafting acceptable use policy: managing the electronic commons", already expresses his vision for protecting, sharing and promoting good management of the commons. Rob's profession as a "Public School Teacher" also forged his willingness to apply learning theory in all the projects he initiated or contributed to. In this respect, among over a hundred of his written and oral communications, the Keynote topic he often proposed was: "What is: Pedagogy, education, intelligence, knowledge, learning, teaching, information, etc.: why do we care about the differences? Here again, we find a concern for inclusion and diversity, as well as a reminder that despite the "Technology for Humanity" slogan advocated and constantly applied by IEEE, "pedagogy" should always be considered. Affective Computing is one of Rob's research credos. The numerous scientific articles he has co-authored with his friend and collaborator Barry Kort, both former MIT Visiting Scientists, bear witness to this. Barry and Rob are both visionaries of Affective Computing. Reborn today, the return of Affective Computing, emotion and artificial intelligence to modern technology-enhanced learning systems seems indispensable. 

Speaking of her intellectually alert husband, Mary, his wife's contribution to his eulogy read: "Rob was intellectual and loved learning. Much of his research at MIT encompassed the way individuals learn. He put that research to use not only in his computer classroom, often using his students as subjects, but in educating adults about the art of teaching and coaching."

Rob Reilly was also a prolific writer. In addition to writing popular and social articles for 7 years from 2001 to 2008 in the Teachers' Gazette (Teachers.net), he was the Webmaster of the IEEE Education Society website from 2003 to 2015. He has also presented several proposals for strategic visions for development and for increasing the quality of services to be rendered to our members during the many AdCom and BoG meetings of the IEEE Education Society. 

All the functions and regular or ad hoc membership positions held by our illustrious departed also converge and contribute to the development and growth of the number of "chapters". In fact, for several years he held the position of "Chapter Chair" in addition to the other responsibilities for which he had been elected. The many awards and recognitions he received from the IEEE Education Society and other IEEE Organizational Units testify to the success of his service to members. 

This overview of the life of a man who was visionary, “who people are happy to listen to”, humble, cordial, intellectual, affable and open to the world, leads us to briefly conclude in this preliminary testimonial that our comrade Rob was, while loyal to his country the United States of America, had worthily fulfilled his duty as a patriot of the global world. Finally, on the family front, late Robert A. Reilly was a good and loving father. These short excerpts from his eulogy, delivered by his wife Mary, bear witness to this: "Rob was loving. He loved his family,...", "Rob was so happy and proud to be 'Poppy' to his granddaughters...", "From the day we first met he stood by and supported my two boys."
Some of Rob's “favorite” accomplishments, which to this day excite his IEEE Education Society collaborators, and which had led to the creation of new chapters and student branches for our Society and are still being implemented, are: 

•  IEEE Engineering for the Americas (EftA), in seed funding to develop a proof-of-concept model for further funding. Funded by the IEEE Education Society (2016).
• Mainstreaming Engineers in Africa and the Middle East. An 18-month grant from the IEEE Foundation, Inc (#2006-017 - August 2006 through February 2008).

We continue today using some of his preferred “starting” sentences/figures inside the talks and keynotes, one related to whom are the speakers of only one language country as well as the image of how will be the education of the future from the 1900 perspective (L'école du futur, 1901 ou 1910, Jean-Marc Côté ou Villemard). 

Such is life. Paul Valery wrote: "Rembrandt knows that flesh is mud whose light makes gold". For us, the light kindled by our friend and colleague will never be extinguished.

We're inviting IEEE EdSoc chapters and members of our society to send us testimonials for the Tribute to Rob edition we'll be presenting this October at the Frontiers in Education Conference in Washington (FIE2024).
 - IEEE Education Society and friend Hamadou Saliah-Hassane

A Few Submitted Images of Rob