Carol Ann Hofstadter & Prof. Edoardo Lèbano
Rome, June of 1986
Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship
Any Indiana University undergrad-uate who has been selected to spend a full academic year in Italy as a participant in the Bologna Cooperative Studies Program is eligible to apply for the annual Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship. The amount of the annual award is $2,000. While financial need will be a consideration, the final selection will be made on the basis of a student’s academic record, letters of recommendation, and a personal interview. Interested and qualified students should contact overseas @indiana.edu.
Carol Ann Brush was born in Linton, Indiana, in 1951, and grew up in Indianapolis and its suburb Plainfield. Her mother was of Neapolitan origin, and Carol inherited her mother's Mediterranean beauty and grew up feeling Italian. As a girl, Carol loved classical music and spent endless hours reading. She was also artistically talented and loved drawing and painting. She did well in high school and wanted to go to college, but her family couldn't afford it, so Carol found work as a telephone operator for several years. Finally at age 22, Carol moved to Bloomington and entered IU. She decided to major in art history but also took courses in Italian, and soon found she loved Italian so much that she wound up doing a double major. Edoardo Lebano was her favorite Italian professor, and in the summer of 1977 she was thrilled to go to Bologna in the IU Exchange Program, of which Edoardo was director. Going to Italy was the realization of a magical dream for Carol, and she loved Bologna best of all. That year, Carol was also awarded a departmental prize for the best student of Italian, making her and her family very proud.
In 1985, Carol married Doug Hofstadter, who had been an IU professor from 1977 to 1983 but who had recently moved to the University of Michigan. In 1988 Doug was hired back by IU and the young couple returned to Bloomington and started a family -- Danny, born in 1988, and Monica, born in 1991. One of Carol and Doug's fondest dreams was to bring up bilingual children, and so they decided to spend Doug's first sabbatical year (1993-94) in Italy. In August of that year, the family moved to Trento, in the Italian Dolomites, with views of beautiful mountains on every side. In early December, Carol had a series of intense headaches and on December 12, she suddenly fell into a coma. Ten days later, never having regained consciousness, she died of a brain tumor. Though devastated, Doug resolved to finish out the year in Italy in the way Carol would have wanted, and Danny and Monica became truly bilingual, thus realizing Carol's dream.
Carol loved learning, she loved IU, and particularly she loved IU's FRIT Department and the Bologna exchange program. To honor her memory, Carol's husband Doug, along with other family members and friends, established an annual award to support one or more deserving IU students in Bologna. It is hoped that the recipients of the Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship will benefit as much from their stay in Bologna as Carol did from hers.
