Faculty Remembered, Spring 2026

David Becker, director emeritus of bands, died October 3, 2025, at age 76. A beloved member of the college community, Becker spent nearly 30 years on the faculty before retiring in 2011.

A native of Corvallis, Oregon, Becker earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education from the University of Oregon. After building successful high school band programs across Oregon, he joined Lewis & Clark in 1982. As director of bands, he conducted the concert and jazz bands and taught courses in music education, conducting, and jazz appreciation. He also supervised student teachers in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling’s Master of Arts in Teaching program and led numerous fine arts overseas study programs in London.

Michaela “Micha” Paasche Grudin, professor emerita of English, died January 12, 2026, at age 84.

Born in Tokyo in 1941 to German parents who had fled Nazi persecution, Grudin spent her early childhood in wartime Japan before her family immigrated to San Francisco in 1948. She later attended Antioch College and earned her PhD in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley.

Grudin taught at the University of Oregon before joining the Lewis & Clark faculty, where she became known for her lively teaching and deep engagement with Renaissance literature. Despite English being her third language, she built a distinguished scholarly career, publishing Chaucer and the Politics of Discourse (1996) and Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Ciceronian Renaissance (2012), the latter coauthored with her husband, Robert. Her research on Boccaccio even led her to learn Italian and help launch an L&C overseas study program in Siena.

Molly Robinson, associate professor of French, died March 17, 2026, at age 55 due to complications from cancer treatment.

Robinson joined Lewis & Clark in 2004, after studying in Belgium and earning a PhD in romance languages and literatures from Princeton, with a specialization in medieval French literature. She wrote The Hero’s Place: Medieval Literary Traditions of Space and Belonging (2009) as well as numerous articles on medieval tales and more recent work on Gustave Flaubert and Oscar Wilde.

“Molly was a cornerstone of the world languages and literatures department and the French section, as well as a vibrant, engaged, fiercely dedicated member of the larger college,” says Bruce Suttmeier, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “In recent years, she poured her heart into making all of us better teachers through her work as director of the Teaching Excellence Program. To her students, whether in her classes or at the Mossy Log student newspaper, where she served as faculty advisor for over a dozen years, she was a mentor, advocate, wise counsel, and enthusiastic believer in every student’s potential.”  

Survivors include Atticus Kelly BA ’29.

Richard “Rich” Peck, associate professor emeritus of international affairs, died March 22, 2026, at age 81. Peck was a cornerstone of the Lewis & Clark community for over three decades, from 1974 until his retirement in 2008. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley and his graduate studies at Yale, he brought an important global perspective to campus, primarily through his dedicated teaching on the cultures and politics of Africa and Southeast Asia.

Peck’s impact was perhaps most visible through his work with the overseas study programs. He was instrumental in expanding L&C’s reach into East Africa, leading trips in 1978 and 2010, and sharing his passion for international engagement by leading programs to Ecuador in 1986 and Argentina in 1988. Even after his formal retirement, Peck remained connected with the L&C community. Living just a short distance from campus, he continued to support the institution’s global mission by hosting foreign exchange students for the past several years.