Lori Cameron still has a copy of the letter that was received by her mother a short time after her father’s death in 1994. It was from a former colleague of his, sharing that they’d set up a scholarship in his honour at the University of Regina School of Journalism.

“My dad would have loved it,” she says, remembering. “And, over the following years, we supported the fund in his honour, and the award grew.  We appreciated receiving thank you letters from the student recipients, and learning about the positive impact the award had.”

More than twenty years later, Lori and her husband Joe Fuoco were in a meeting with their own financial advisor. She encouraged them to ensure their estate plan was complete and showed them how much of their estate they could give away to charity while still remembering other beneficiaries—a proportion that surprised them. She suggested they consider what they wanted to create as their legacy.

Lori reflected on the student thank you letters from her dad’s scholarship, and she realized that, in addition to contributing to her dad’s scholarship through her estate, she could create her own scholarship, in a field she was passionate about. She had attended the same university and earned a degree in Geography, and had loved the department, the program, and everything she’d learned and accomplished. She enjoyed a successful career in business and the non-profit sector, but she’d never lost her passion for urban geography and planning, volunteering with her local West Vancouver community and other organizations. She decided to set up an award for students at the University of Regina in Geography and Environmental Studies, funding it annually and endowing it through her estate plans—helping tomorrow’s students pursue the program she herself had valued so much.

Joe felt the same: he also wanted to support his alma mater but wasn’t sure exactly how or where. Joe earned his degree from UBC, in Mechanical Engineering, and had spent most of his career as a Professional Engineer in the oil and gas sector.

“He was thinking clean energy, green energy, and graduate students,” recalls Lori.

But it wasn’t until a 2022 visit to campus, and conversations with UBC’s Gift and Estate Planning Team, that things became clear.

While he was considering his options, Joe recalled his work with UBC professor Dr. Kendal Bushe during the 1990s, when they co-chaired the BC Chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Through this work, Joe supported UBC’s engineering student design and competition teams. He reached out to Kendal to ask about donating to UBC through his estate plans, and Kendal put Joe in touch with UBC’s Development Office. In December 2022, Joe and Lori visited the campus. Along with gift and estate planning experts, they met with graduate students, the faculty in the Clean Energy Research Centre, and a number of others.

But it was a quick trip at the end of their meeting to visit the Engineering Student Teams that crystallized things for them. Joe remembered the initiatives of student teams from twenty years ago.  In the intervening time since Joe had supported them, the student teams had largely relocated to the impressive Wayne and William White Engineering Design Centre, with its large open design and fabrication spaces full of resources for the students. They had also expanded in numbers, now with over 30 teams involving over 1000 undergraduate engineering students every year.

“Joe loved the fact that the student teams not only gave the students a place to put their classroom knowledge into practice—but to be truly successful, they needed to collaborate with students across campus: arts students for communications, business students for marketing, computer science students for the coding,” remembers Lori.

His career had shown him the vital need for engineers to collaborate and work in teams, and he knew that these skills were going to be some of the most important for engineers and other students to develop.

It was here, Lori notes, that Joe realized he could achieve all his aims. “Joe was an enthusiastic and dedicated mentor throughout his career,” she says. The idea that he could promote engineering, clean energy, mentorship, and collaboration, all within the student teams he’d loved during his days with SAE, was the perfect opportunity. In fact, Joe and Lori were so inspired that, in addition to including the teams in their estate plan, they made a present-day gift of shares so they could achieve the impact of their gift during their lifetime. Within a few days, they’d made their first donation to establish the Joe Fuoco Engineering Student Teams Endowment.

“Joe had ideas about what he wanted, but it took coming to campus and meeting with people to really find the right concept,” Lori says. Going to campus, she said, brought it to life for them, and made the process exciting, inspiring, and resulted in exactly the right plan. “People may not think that estate planning can be fun or enjoyable,” she says, “But this was uplifting—and it’s inspiring each time I come back to campus and learn more about what the teams are doing.” And it’s gratifying, she notes, to have the estate planning carefully thought out, and to know that some of it is going to support others in education at the places that they each valued so much, and which led to many career and life opportunities they may not have had otherwise.

What would Lori say to those who are still considering their estate plans?

“Joe and I are ordinary hard-working people. We are an example of how it’s possible for regular people to achieve a substantial legacy. And being in touch with UBC has made the process easy and really rewarding. It’s so meaningful for us to help so many people!”

After Joe’s passing in fall 2024, Lori found comfort in knowing that many people reached out to UBC to donate to the endowment fund in his honour. “Joe was extremely proud of his legacy at UBC through the endowment and he considered it a powerful and enduring achievement.” She continues to build the amount of their estate gift to UBC. “It’s what Joe would have wanted,” she says. And naming the endowment ensures that the students know that there were people behind their success—and that they, too, can pay it forward one day.

UBC is proud to be home to Joe’s legacy of support for the engineering student teams—from his participation as a student, and then as a volunteer, and then as a donor—and we look forward to seeing many generations of students benefit from participation in the student teams, thanks to support from Lori and Joe.