The Michael Brewster
& Marcia McClintock
Folsom Educator Fund
At its heart and since its founding, the Charles River Museum has always been an educational institution. That mission stems directly from our founder, Michael Brewster Folsom, and his wife, longtime Board Chair Marcia McClintock Folsom. Both were lifelong educators who believed that learning must be a human-centered, active process, one that connects technological progress with human effort, labor, and community.
The Michael Brewster & Marcia McClintock Folsom Educator Fund honors their enduring legacy by directly supporting the museum’s educational work. The fund provides vital resources for our education team, enabling us to compensate dedicated instructional personnel, develop hands-on curriculum materials, and design engaging public and school programs. By expanding access to immersive learning experiences, the Folsom Fund ensures that students, families, and learners of all ages and backgrounds can explore the roots of American innovation.
Through this fund, Mike and Marcia’s passion for teaching continues to inspire
future generations to understand how industry shapes our shared world.
Michael Brewster Folsom:
Michael Folsom was instrumental in setting up MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS), designed to use humanities and social sciences to study how science, technology, and medicine shape the world and are shaped by human society.
In explaining why he set out to found the Charles River Museum, he wrote:
"To understand the role of industrial development in our lives--and to help create a more informed citizenry--we are opening a center in which we can invite the public to explore the roots of modern industry and the heritage of initiative, opportunity, and sacrifice that has shaped the world we know.
“Technological and entrepreneurial innovation, mass-production, and industrial labor are the forces that built modern America. The Museum's task is to explain how and why that happened and what it means."
Marcia McClintock Folsom:
For more than 50 years, Marcia McClintock Folsom was an educator known for her compassion, kindness, and insight . She was truly the soul of the Charles River Museum and the reason it remained resilient despite great challenges. Marcia viewed education as a shared journey of discovery.
Reflecting on her decades as a teacher, she recounted the "privilege" of having her students rekindle her love and appreciation of Jane Austen's work, speaking to the transformative nature of teaching and learning:
"The privilege I claim for my profession as a teacher is quite enviable: I reread Austen’s writing every year with relatively new readers, and go through the pleasure of rediscovering her works as my students are reading them and writing about them. Austen’s legacy stays fresh for me partly because of the living experience of the classroom and my discoveries in reading and responding to student writing."
