Robert Foshko Scholarship Fund

The Department of Radio Television and Film (RTF) in the Moody College of Communication celebrates excellence in screenwriting by annually awarding the Robert Foshko Scholarship Fund to two students, each of whom will win a $1,500 stipend and pitch meetings with industry professionals in Los Angeles.

For nearly three decades, Robert Foshko taught screenwriting and television production at RTF. He established RTF’s screenwriting curriculum and built up the graduate writing program, served as a founding member of the Michener Center for Writers, and brought the television production curriculum to the level of professional training.

A two-time Emmy winner and long-time member of the Director’s Guild of America, he shaped the careers of generations of students. Before he embraced teaching, Bob had a rich career across a broad spectrum of popular entertainment. He worked with Lew Wasserman, Jackie Gleason, Peggy Lee, Guy Lombardo, Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, and other luminaries of the late 1950s and early 1960s, television’s “Golden Age”. He wrote for Argosy, a popular pulp fictionmagazine, and for comics – Flash Gordon among others.

After receiving his Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Bob served in the Korean War as a 1st Lieutenant in the Air Force as a top turret gunner on a B-25. When he returned he enrolled in Graduate School, only to discover that the assigned chapter for the television course was one that he co-authored as an undergraduate. He literally wrote the book.

Students and former teaching assistants recalled him as a gentleman, an attentive and inspirational mentor who was “bigger than life”. One of them observed that “He taught us that in our industry, it’s the story that matters above all”. Bob wanted to fund a scholarship to help students who were focused on narrative screenwriting. Donations from his family, and friends of the University, have helped make it possible.

Bob’s work entertained and delighted people, and he in turn gave countless students the tools and encouragement to present their own stories to the world. Through this legacy he will inspire and support talented storytellers for years to come.