Sara Wilson didn’t imagine that a recent phone conversation with Virginia Tech professor Kevin Granata would be her last.

“The last time I talked to him was right after I got tenure and he congratulated me,” the Kansas University assistant mechanical engineering professor said. “That was a couple weeks ago.”

Then she learned late Monday night that Granata, for whom Wilson had been a research assistant at the University of Virginia six years ago, was among the 33 people who died Monday at the Virginia Tech campus.

“I had a fear that somebody I knew was going to be one of them,” said Wilson, who knew several engineering students and faculty members at Virginia Tech. “I knew they were on the first floor of (Norris Hall), so I was kind of worried about that.”

Granata had been a biomechanics researcher and professor at Virginia Tech since 2003.

Wilson said Granata became her mentor in engineering and teaching when they worked together from 1999 to 2001.

“He was sort of the role model for what an engineer should be,” Wilson said. “Very curious, very interested in science, very excited about science and about figuring things out.”

The KU School of Engineering had another connection with the Virginia Tech shootings.

A former aerospace engineering student at KU who’s now at Virginia Tech attended Tuesday’s convocation in Blacksburg, Va., where President Bush was among the speakers.

“I think for most people, it’s hard to believe,” said Scott Kowalchuk, who received a bachelor’s degree at KU in 2002 and a master’s degree in 2004. “It’s kind of unbelievable and also troubling considering I’m in the engineering department and it’s primarily the engineering area where everything went down.”

Kowalchuk was at a conference in Williamsburg, Va., when the shootings took place and didn’t return to Blacksburg, Va., until Monday evening.

He said the reaction he’s seen among students ranged from devastation to optimism.

“What you see on TV is exactly what has transpired,” he said. “Some people are really angry and others are trying to cope and others are trying to move on from the situation.”

Meanwhile, Wilson said she was trying to make it to Virginia for Granata’s funeral and is considering creating a scholarship in his name.

“He had a great excitement for science,” she said. “And he will be missed.”