Donor Stories: Andrews Family
A Tribute by a Family Who Values Education
They married in 1965, and Marjorie joined Lester in Berkeley, California, where he completed a doctorate. In the following year the young couple moved to Charlottesville, and Lester joined the U.Va. Chemistry Department faculty. Marjorie immediately began work on an MAT degree in mathematics through the College of Arts and Sciences, which she completed in 1968. Eight years and two sons later, she resumed her graduate work, earning a Ph.D in statistical research design, with the Curry School’s Don Ball as her thesis advisor. She wanted to be involved in something important, according to Lester. “She continued her education because she wished to be stimulated and to contribute.” In subsequent years, Marjorie worked as an association dean in the College then became a tax preparer for H&R Block and eventually taught basic and advanced tax preparation courses. Marjorie passed away in December 2006, and she has continued to be very much in the hearts and minds of her family. This spring Lester and their sons Scott and Ross established the Marjorie Hare Andrews Endowed Fellowship through the Curry School Foundation to honor her memory and to provide aid to doctoral students engaged in empirical education research. The endowment has been funded with gifts of cash and stock from Lester, Scott, and Ross. The income from their gifts will provide a $5,000 fellowship to be awarded annually to a Curry graduate student in the dissertation phase of the program. “Our family places value on education, especially higher education” Lester says, “and our sons and I wanted to honor her in a way that we value. We felt that helping someone else do something similar to what she did would be an appropriate way to remember her.” |
Marjorie Hare and Lester Andrews met during their high school years. They played in the Starkville High School band together, and their fathers were both agricultural scientists at Mississippi State University. Growing up around a college campus, they both knew the value of higher education.