UConn has always been important to Tom and Eileen Marston.<\/p>\n
Tom, an alum, has been a volunteer and a longtime basketball season ticket holder. Together, he and his wife, Eileen, started a scholarship to support students at the Avery Point campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cUConn\u2019s been an important part of our lives for a long time,\u201d Tom \u201974 (CLAS) says.<\/p>\n
The Marstons recently took their support of UConn a step further with a gift through Tom\u2019s life insurance policy. They named the UConn Foundation as a beneficiary to receive half of the policy. Through this planned gift, they will be able to further support their scholarship fund, the Tom and Eileen Marston Scholarship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really wanted to support the scholarship,\u201d Tom explains. \u201cThis was a way to set a substantial amount aside to continue the scholarship in perpetuity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scholarship has already provided financial support for 11 undergraduate students at the Avery Point campus since it was established in 2010. Now it will support many more students for years to come, leaving a generous legacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cCreating a scholarship has been very rewarding,\u201d Tom says. \u201cWe\u2019ve even met some of the recipients over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current recipient, Benjamin LeBlanc \u201925, a coastal studies major, says it has helped alleviate some of the pressure of paying for college.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scholarship has allowed me to focus more on my school assignments without worrying about whether I\u2019ll be able to pay tuition,\u201d LeBlanc says. \u201cI\u2019ve been able to do more on campus and focus on studying because I\u2019ve been able to cut back on the number of hours I need to spend working.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Marston did not attend the Avery Point campus, but his father, Thomas R. Marston \u201971 (ED), did. His father\u2019s class was the first to graduate from Avery Point shortly after it opened in 1967. The Marstons decided to earmark their scholarship to support Avery Point students as a way to honor him and meet a need.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we first started looking at possible scholarships we could do, we found that while there were hundreds of these level scholarships at Storrs, there were only two at Avery Point,\u201d Tom says.<\/p>\n
Tom, who was raised in Clinton, majored in biology at UConn and went on to earn a master\u2019s in environmental science from the University of New Haven. He spent most of his career at the Connecticut Water Co., rising through the ranks to become vice president of business development.<\/p>\n
He tapped into his water company expertise when he served on the advisory board of the University\u2019s Institute of Water Resources. He was also part of a team of water company employees who reached out to UConn to assist in the operation of their water supply system following an incident in 2005 when the University\u2019s water withdrawals caused the Fenton River to run dry. The team worked with University officials to map out strategies and consider capital and ongoing maintenance needs to build a world-class water supply system.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Eileen is not a UConn graduate but a major supporter through the couple\u2019s scholarship. She graduated from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, majoring in history and English. After college, she held several administrative jobs, then devoted herself to volunteer work, raising service dogs primarily for the Guiding Eyes for the Blind program.<\/p>\n
\u201cPuppies are a lot of work, but it was really rewarding,\u201d Eileen says. \u201cIt was something we did together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now retired, the Marstons live in Leland, North Carolina, and have two adult children and two grandchildren. Though they\u2019ve moved down south, they still find their way to a UConn basketball game or two in the region every year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The scholarship has already provided financial support for 11 undergraduate students at the Avery Point campus and now it will support many more students for years to come<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":217371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,2235,173,70],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2162],"class_list":["post-217372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-avery-point","category-video","post_format-post-format-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 05:24:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217372"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217376,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217372\/revisions\/217376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/217371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217372"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=217372"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=217372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}