The Goucher College professor who made math fun and accessible for his students

Students watched carefully as Robert “Bob” Lewand dragged a stick through the hot Greek sand, connecting the lines of a square that would prove exactly why a²+b²=c².

It’s how Pythagoras would have illustrated his famous geometric proof to his students some 2,500 years ago. But in this study-abroad class about 25 years ago, it was one of the many ways that Lewand, a longtime professor at Goucher College, made math fun.

He knew algebra inside and out, could solve even the most complicated of calculus problems. He knew 200-plus digits of pi. But what did it matter if his students weren’t learning? If they didn’t care? So he designed classes on cryptology and the history of time, and partnered with professors in other departments to make math more interesting and accessible.

His longtime colleague and friend, philosophy professor John Rose, always told him he could “teach math to dirt.” Eventually, Lewand jokingly asked him to put that on his tombstone, because that’s probably what he’d be doing six feet under.

The Parkville resident, also a computer science professor and adoring family man with hobbies ranging from pedal steel guitar to pickleball, died Sept. 29 of pancreatic cancer complications. He was 81.

Lewand was born in New York City on Dec. 5, 1944, the oldest of Regina and Edward Lewand’s three children. His mother so doted on him that a pediatrician once told her to “let this kid eat dirt once in a while,” said his daughter, Beth Lewand.

He was plenty mischievous with his younger siblings, Edward and Dorothy. When they played the board game Trouble, Bob always had time for another round if his sister was victorious. But if Bob won, he proclaimed that that was the championship game.

Lewand attended a Catholic high school, where he managed the football team and excelled in academics. He enjoyed the experience so much that he sought out a Catholic college. He majored in math at the University of Dayton in Ohio and minored in philosophy and physics.

There, he met the future Karen Lewand, a student a year below him. They both came from Polish immigrant families and were the first in their families to attend college. They spent date nights at the movies and bonded over shared values of helping those less fortunate than they were, Beth Lewand said.

After graduation, the couple moved near the University of Virginia, where Bob Lewand was pursuing a doctorate in math. They got married, and Karen taught a few classes while Bob volunteered for local youth committees and taught tennis, his daughter said.

He finished his doctorate in 1971 and started teaching in Vermont. Meanwhile, the Lewands started their family. Beth arrived that year, and another daughter, Stephanie, was born in 1975, when they were living in New Hampshire. Soon, the college Lewand was working at shut down.

It wasn’t long before Goucher came across his desk. He began working there as a math professor in 1977 and stayed until his retirement in 2015. He also had teaching stints at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry and the Johns Hopkins University. He earned a master’s degree in computer science from Hopkins in 1985 to help establish a similar program at Goucher.

Rose, his longtime colleague, met Lewand in 1984 and remembers his intelligence and deadpan humor. He discovered that Lewand was one of the authors of “InnerNews,” an anonymous satirical newsletter about Goucher happenings that would find its way under professors’ office doors a few times a year.

Lewand always came to his classes prepared with material and patience, Rose said. Once, he asked a student to give him a random odd number for an exercise. The student looked back at him in horror. Instead of chastising her or poking fun at the gaffe, he reminded her gently: “You have a 50-50 chance of being right.”

“He put things up on the blackboard, moved step-by-step so everybody could stay right with him,” Rose said. “He was a brilliant, wonderful teacher, and he’d pause and say, ‘Are there any questions?’ And he’d always find some kind of folksy or fun example.”

He stayed involved in other university happenings, including faculty governance. He was also for many years the faculty representative to the NCAA.

Lewand wrote books on cryptology and intelligent systems design and completed research on early-stage artificial intelligence and robotics. When he retired from Goucher, the school created the Robert E. Lewand Beauty of Mathematics Prize in his honor.

He also had plenty of hobbies to keep him busy. He picked up pedal steel guitar some 30 years ago and was always up for a jam session. He ran 13 marathons and one ultramarathon. He picked up boxing in his 50s. He volunteered annually with Stephanie at the Franciscan Center. In recent years, he enjoyed traveling with his partner, Patricia Bereson, whom he met at grief counseling after his wife died in 2012.

His proudest achievement was his family. He was a devoted caregiver for his wife when she fell sick. While going through documents Bob had prepared before his death, Beth Lewand found a note he’d written saying how proud he was of his children’s strength and resilience.

She and her sister have fond childhood memories of their father taking them to see John Waters movies and bringing them camping and on beach trips. He hosted a pretend radio show with them. Once, on a road trip, he asked Beth to set a timer so he could scientifically test whether time actually feels slower on the New Jersey Turnpike (it does).

He was “somebody with a sense of humor,” Stephanie Lewand said. “He always had that, regardless of what was going on.”

Even on his deathbed, his children said, he maintained the lightheartedness and sincerity they’d come to know well. He teased his sister, Dorothy, like old times, and told Stephanie, as he always had, that he was praying for her friends.

A private funeral service is scheduled for Oct. 13.

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