Jeff Conant's passion was teaching, so colleagues have decided to honor the marketing professor who died last summer by endowing a scholarship in his name.
Enter Project Conant, an effort by a few of the former Mays Business School marketing department head's students, family members and close colleagues.
The group organized a benefit concert. The 7 p.m. event on April 1 at College Station's Wolf Pen Creek Amphitheater will feature country artist and Aggie Granger Smith.
"This just tells you the impact he had on so many people," said Janet Parish, assistant department head who was recruited in 2001 by Conant. "He was a friend to everyone he met. ... He made everyone around him better than they were."
The concert ticket is a $10 T-shirt, available Tuesday through Thursday at Wehner, Koldus and Commons, and every day at Spoons Yogurt in the Kohl's shopping center in College Station.
The immediate unofficial goal is $15,000, which would be enough to endow the scholarship and give one away to a marketing undergraduate in May, Parish said.
On the day of the concert, at 3 p.m., officials will dedicate a lab in the Wehner Building that Conant helped get funding for as the Jeffrey S. Conant Behavioral Research Lab.
Conant died unexpectedly at age 54 in late June after contracting an infection that led to pneumonia. He had been undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia.
The winner of several prestigious teaching awards, Conant joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1986. Colleagues remember him as a family man who related every situation to an episode of Seinfeld.
"To be honest," Parish said, "part of putting on this event is healing for us. His loss was so huge. It's to honor him, but it's for us to learn how to function without him."
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