Tutorial Funds Honor Fuqua
One of John Foster’s ’80 few regrets about his Williams education was that he shied away from forming close relationships with his professors. But he fondly remembers Charlie Fuqua, who taught one of Foster’s first college classes, as “the man who introduced me to education at Williams in a generous and thoughtful way.”
And so, as part of a $1 million gift commitment to The Williams Campaign, Foster has chosen to celebrate that experience by endowing a tutorial fund named in Fuqua’s honor.
“I was an ill-prepared rookie who was learning quickly that the water at Williams can be deep,” Foster says of his time as one of only eight students in Fuqua’s survey of the poetry of Catullus and Propertius. “Had Charlie been of a mind to do it, he could have blown me away. Instead, I remember a man who loved his subject and infected those around him with it.”
Foster thus focused his gift on tutorials, which involve intensive weekly sessions between a professor and two students, because “there is no doubt in my mind that a relationship with the instructor is going to be formed. So if Williams is able to offer more tutorials, I want to support it.”
Fuqua, the new fund’s honoree and the Garfield Professor of Ancient Languages, emeritus, agrees. “And the very best part about John’s gift,” he adds, “is that it’s coming from a former student and is going to help current and future students.”