Part of the LAC family

Stan and Lois Tucker have adopted the Liberal Arts College (LAC) as their special interest. Their most recent gift, celebrated at an informal reception on March 19, was a handsome six-volume collected works of Shakespeare.

Stan Tucker's generosity to Concordia began almost 20 years ago. When his first wife, Rita, died, he decided to establish a fund in her name, even though he had no previous connection to Concordia. Then he received a general appeal in the mail from the Liberal Arts College.

Impressed by the College's small class size and the broad range of its Great Books curriculum, he gave LAC founder Professor Fred Krantz a cheque for $3,000 to start the Rita Tucker Library. That was in 1980. On a shoestring, Krantz and his colleagues have built that head start into Liberal Arts College's 3,000-work collection of the great works of Western civilization.

When Stan and Lois married, they asked their guests to donate to the library and LAC's scholarship fund instead of giving them wedding gifts. "He'd been married 37 years and I'd been married 24 years," Lois Tucker said. "The last thing we needed was another cup and saucer."

The LAC takes about 100 students a year, based on interviews, and while many of them have splendid marks, Professor Harvey Shulman said that marks alone are not the criterion for acceptance. "The overriding criterion is curiosity, which doesn't always correspond to grades," he said. "In that sense, we respond to Concordia's mission."

For the College's 20th anniversary next year, Shulman is planning a reunion. It will feature as speakers some of the LAC graduates who can be found on the faculties of universities around the world, often in prestigious positions.

- Barbara Black, with information by Alison Ramsey, Concordia University Magazine