Victoria Billings
vbillings@mustangdaily.net
Cal Poly staff, faculty and friends met at a special campus memorial service Sept. 25 to remember physics senior Jacob Van Staaveren following his death in a skateboarding accident during summer break.
Those who knew him will remember him as a kind, soft-spoken and curious student, physics professor David Mitchell said.
“He was just such a kind, gentle person,” Mitchell said. “Even if you didn’t know him well, all your interactions with him were so good.”
Mitchell first met Van Staaveren during the physics student’s freshman year, when he was a soil science major taking Mitchell’s Introduction the the Solar System (ASTR 101) class, Mitchell said.
Van Staaveren stood out as an intelligent and hard-working student who stayed after class at least once a week to ask questions about the lessons, Mitchell said.
Despite Van Staaveren’s curiosity, Mitchell assumed he would probably not have him in another class once the quarter was over, he said.
That year, though, Van Staaveren changed majors, switching into physics with a minor in astronomy, where he worked closely with Mitchell on projects with Cal Poly’s telescope.
“I got to know him and he’s just a really nice, gentle guy,” Mitchell said.
Van Staaveren enjoyed his research at the observatory so much that he had even decided to do his senior project at the observatory in a study of the transit of extrasolar planets, Mitchell said.
Unfortunately, Van Staaveren died before completing his project, after he hit a truck while skateboarding in San Luis Obispo during the summer. Nevertheless, his previous research contributed hugely to the understanding of extrasolar planets as he added to an online database of similar research from around the world, Mitchell said.
When Mitchell received word Van Staaveren had died, it was the worst experience of his career, he said.
“That’s by far the worst thing that I’ve ever had to deal with in my job,” Mitchell said.
To deal with the tragedy, the physics department arranged a memorial service for its student, where Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong, Associated Students, Inc. President Katie Morrow, Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics Phil Bailey and faculty and friends of Van Staaveren had a chance to remember him and mourn his death.
The memorial service helped bring closure to a painful incident, Mitchell said. For the weeks coming up to it, he could think of hardly anything but what he could say to honor his student at the service, Mitchell said.
The service also helped people overcome their grief together, physics senior Kris Schobert said.
“You could tell there was a lot of cathartic appreciation for Jacob,” Schobert said.
Van Staaveren’s death and the following memorial service, while rocking the relatively small physics department, also made the students and faculty a tight-knit group, Schobert said.
“I thought it really brought all the physics students and the faculty even closer together,” Schobert said.
Schobert remembers Van Staaveren as happy and kind, as well as incredibly curious about the workings of the universe, he said.
He admired Van Staaveren’s curiosity, and the way he seemed to be in tune with the physical world, Schobert said.
“I felt like he had a deep connection with the ways the world worked,” Schobert said.
Even students who didn’t know him very well remember him fondly, physics senior Kara Zappitelli said.
Zappitelli was never close with Van Staaveren, but she saw him skateboarding by her house often, and thought he was very laid back, she said.
Whether or not everyone was close with him, though, everyone remembers him as both bright and helpful, Zappitelli said.
“A lot of the professors and everything, they just had amazing things to say about him,” Zappitelli said.
In addition to being kind in life, he was also kind in death, Zappitelli said. Van Staaveren had signed up to be an organ donor, and was able to donate several organs after he passed away.
“It was something he was super serious about,” Zappitelli said. “Right when he was 16, he signed up to be a donor.”