Jean Thomas

The Foothill College community gathered Thursday in memory of counselor Jean Thomas, Ph.D., who died of cancer June 15. She was a longtime resident of Mountain View.

Dr. Thomas served Foothill students as a counselor for more than three decades. In 1994, she founded the award-winning Pass the Torch program, which, under her direction, has helped more than 2,000 students succeed in English as a second language, English composition and a full range of mathematics courses.

This innovative program pairs high-achieving students with at-risk students who have chosen to join a study team. The program’s name conveys the message that all students who have mastered a subject can pass their knowledge to others.

In 2002, Dr. Thomas secured a grant to disseminate the Pass the Torch program to the University of California at Berkeley and Davis and to San Francisco State University to support community college students transferring to those universities. She hoped to expand the program to community-college, University of California and California State University campuses.