Ferris State biology professor Dr. Paul Klatt died on April 27. He was a kind man who everyone loved, according to his colleagues.
Klatt started at Ferris in 2005 when he joined the biology department. He also started the Osprey cameras on campus.
Department Chair of Biological Sciences Dr. Beth Zimmer remembered Klatt’s excitement about the osprey cameras.
“When [Klatt] would have classes, he would, before the lecture started, go down into lecture and put the osprey webcam up so students knew that they were there,” Zimmer said. “In the summer, in his ecology class, and actually in the fall, they do a bird behavior ecology assignment with the Osprey webcam.”
Biology professor Dr. Bradley Isler joined Ferris in 2005 and worked alongside Klatt for 19 years. He remembered Klatt’s involvement with Ferris.
“They knew him at Ferris and not just in the biology department across Ferris because of the Osprey webcam, because he’s an Academic Senate, because he was on different committees,” Isler said. “I mean, just everybody knew him, and everybody liked him. So, I mean, I think that says a lot about somebody that you can really after 19 years that you’re adored like that by a very widely diverse group of people.”
Isler also remembers Klatt’s humility, especially when discussing the osprey cameras.
“He was very humble, and he always gave credit to the other people,” Isler said. They’ll say ‘Thank you,’ you know, he’d say ‘Oh, it’s the administrators who were helping me and facilitating this. Maybe give me some money once in a while.‘ It was always that, but it was him. I mean, everybody knows anybody who’s been around, who had been around Paul, knows that was him.”
Zimmer felt strongly that Klatt’s presence impacted many and that the department would feel different without him.
“His office was kind of like a memorial and the flowers were put outside and they would hang burns on his door,” Zimmer said. “And so there were a lot of people crying in the halls and talking to students and talking to professors, so it was quite nice to share stories about Paul in a nice but sad way.”
Ferris celebrated the life of Klatt on Tuesday, May 7. They also have plans to collect donations to create an endowment scholarship in his honor.