Community Bids Farewell to Philanthropist, Educator Brady Foust
professor known for inspiring students, supporting artistic causes
Brady Foust, a longtime UW-Eau Claire geography professor, entrepreneur, community leader, and philanthropist, has passed away at age 81.
Foust, who just a few months ago became only the second UWEC professor emeritus inducted as a fellow into the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, taught in the UWEC geography department from 1971 to 2009. “It is near and dear to my heart,” Foust said of the university in a 2021 interview. “I came to UW-Eau Claire in 1971 and thought I would stay a couple years and move on to another university. I fell in love with the university, I fell in love with the students, I fell in love with the city. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
”I fell in love with the university, I fell in love with the students, I fell in love with the city. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
When he was inducted into the Wisconsin Academy in September, Foust was described as a “a geographer, inventor, professor, and patron of arts who has revolutionized insurance geospatial databases, patented new technology, served as a professor at UW-Eau Claire for 37 years, and was president and patron of the Pablo Center at the Confluence in Eau Claire.”
Foust, who died Nov. 27 at his Eau Claire home, is credited with helping the university’s geography department grow into one of the premier undergraduate programs in the country, particularly through an emphasis on Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
“In all my years, I can recall just one student who came to UWEC knowing they wanted to major in geography,” Foust said in an interview earlier this year. “But countless students said to me, ‘I changed my major because of you.’ That’s a gift.”
Foust’s interests and influence extended far beyond the classroom or the field of geography. Foust and his wife, Jeanne, donated $1 million toward the Pablo Center at the Confluence. (Brady Foust also served as chairman of Confluence Council Inc., the arts center’s governing body.) The couple also donated $1 million to the UWEC Foundation to fund scholarships for students double majoring in geospatial analysis and technology, as well as $100,000 to the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library’s recent expansion.
Outside of academia, Foust was a successful businessman and a pioneer of using GIS for economic development, site location, and more. According to his obituary, Foust was a “senior founding partner of Matrix Research, a top retail site location company, and of Proxix Solutions, which was later sold to CoreLogic, (and) one of the three co-founders of HazardHub,” a geospatial risk database.
Foust’s obituary also gives a sense of the breadth of his personality – as well as his vocabulary, describing him as “a bon vivant, raconteur, gourmand, deipnosophist, and wit who did not suffer fools gladly.” (A deipnosophist, if you were curious, is defined as one who is skilled in mealtime conversation.)
“Brady loved cocktails (especially Sazeracs and Brandy Old Fashioneds),” the obituary continued, “and cities (particularly New York, Paris, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and St. Paul) and he could instantly recommend wonderful bars and restaurants the world over, from lowly Delta joints to haute cuisine. An avid loser at many racetracks and poker tables, he led a happy and rewarding life. Lift a glass to him.”
A memorial service will be held at 11am Saturday, Dec. 28, in the Pablo Center’s Clearwater Room in Eau Claire.Doors will be open at 10:30am. You can read Foust’s full obituary here.
