Extending K - 12
Teachers College Class of 1958 standing in the courtyard of their former campus on Huntington Avenue.
It is now home to the Massachusetts College of Art.
So Rose Turco went first and said that she would commit $10,000. Mary Mroz followed with a pledge of $15,000.
Those commitments formed the $25,000 nucleus of the class’s effort to enlist fellow alumni to continue their alma mater’s legacy at UMass Boston. The Class of 1958 Scholarship was celebrated last June at a reunion which included a trolley ride to the former State Teachers College campus on Huntington Avenue. See reunion slide shows on our Celebrations page.
When the group entered the outdoor courtyard of their former campus, they found themselves back at the location of their commencement a half-century ago. This visceral connection with the past reminded them of their admiration for the teaching profession and State Teachers College’s remarkable contributions to the education of children.
Reunion committee chair Turco was a math teacher and believes the skills she learned at State Teachers College were “the foundation of her success.” Mary Tramontozzi Mroz was a lifelong educator in Cambridge. She would never have entered the profession had it not been for the affordability of Teachers College.
The positive energy she experienced in connecting with the Graduate College of Education has motivated Mroz even further. She recently told Dean Carol Colbeck that she will leave half her estate to establish the Mary Mroz Scholarship for a master’s-degree student in elementary education. Colbeck couldn’t be more pleased. She believes the legacy of Boston State “pervades everything we do at the Graduate College of Education.”
Boston State alumni have told her they believe that their education prepared them well to respond to the challenges of ethnic and social-class diversity. “Today they see an even greater spirit of diversity at UMass Boston, but the same spirit of reaching out to foster learning for all students,” Colbeck says.
Prior to her 50th reunion, Rose Turco had the privilege of representing her class at the university’s 2008 commencement a day earlier, and was especially moved when Chancellor Motley asked graduates who were the first in their families to receive a college diploma to stand. “I knew exactly what they were feeling,” she said. “Just like us 50 years ago, these graduates fully appreciate the opportunities they’ve been given.”
