Their oldest child is just six years old when Catherine and Jean-Francois Heitz sit him on a piano bench and enroll him in music lessons. In their small village of Courances, 48.3 kilometers south of Paris, the family has found an austere, professorial-type teacher who forces young Fabien to adhere strictly to the conventions of music theory. As a casual musician himself who also sticks firmly to the notes on sheet music, Jean-Francois wants his son to learn piano and agrees with the teacher's approach.

"To him," Fabien recalls of his father's encouragement, "education is the most important thing. He always told me, 'I'll give you what I can, but the one thing I promise to give you as much as you want is education.'"

But the young Fabien is loathe to want more piano lessons. From an early age, he has a creative approach to music and prefers to play by ear, composing on the fly and adding embellishments to his assigned Bach inventions and Rachmaninov concertos. Playing the notes on the page feels, at times, too constraining.

His love for music, though, continues to grow, as does he, even after his dad's job at Microsoft relocates the family to the company's headquarters outside of Seattle, Wash. There, Fabien starts playing clarinet; by high school, he's picked up playing the trombone and singing in the choir. But he's also developed a second passion—tinkering with cars. Just as Jean-Francois nurtured his son's musical studies, he encourages the budding engineer, too.

When the time comes to consider what to study in college, Fabien—who says he figured out he wasn't a musical prodigy—plans to choose engineering over his other love. He just has to figure where to apply. Fabien's parents, both from France, hadn't lived through the undergraduate application process in America. So, doing the most American thing they know, they head to the local Barnes & Noble and buy their oldest child a catalogue that ranks universities in the United States.

Using the college guide, Fabien makes a list of the top engineering programs. One university stands out because it has not only has a top engineering school but also a first-rate music program. Although he wants to be an engineer to work on cars, he finds Carnegie Mellon's music program to be an attractive bonus.

So, a decade after the father took his son to his first piano lesson, Jean-Francois takes Fabien on a tour of potential universities that includes Fabien's frontrunner. On one of their first stops, a visit to MIT, they leave midway through the tour, unimpressed. When they get to Carnegie Mellon, nobody suggests cutting the trip short. The university that looked so attractive from the catalogue doesn't disappoint Fabien. He’s excited about the possibilities for engineering and music.

"As much as I like engineering and all that dorky stuff, I have a pretty artsy side to me that needed to be let out," he says. It doesn't hurt that their visit is in April: The sun is shining, the flowers are in full bloom in front of Warner Hall, and Carnival celebrations have overtaken Morewood parking lot.

Carnegie Mellon impresses his father, too, particularly in its interdisciplinary approach. "Fabien would not have been able to pursue both mechanical engineering and music in France," he says. This pragmatic blend is important to Jean-Francois, who is happy to see that his son's piano lessons haven't gone to waste.

As Fabien completes his major in mechanical engineering and his minor in music theory, Jean-Francois notices another striking difference between higher education in France and the United States. High-achieving students automatically receive scholarships in France, often leaving just a small tuition balance, explains Heitz. But in America, he learns of promising students unable to finance the commodity Jean-Francois values most—education.

"There are talented students who find it difficult to borrow money, or their parents are not able to do that or even contribute to the level they’re expected, so they have to decide to attend another university," he says. "And I think if a kid is good enough to be accepted to Carnegie Mellon, he or she should be given all the possibilities to attend this university."

Heitz and his wife didn't have an issue when it came to footing the bill for Fabien's education; Jean-Francois climbed the ranks at Microsoft and was named deputy CFO by the time Fabien left for college in 2002. Jean-Francois, now retired, focuses his energy on what he calls "recycling" his money, particularly by giving to students who can't afford college.

"I was lucky, and I want to share [my good fortune] with the values and goals that I think are important for this country," he says.

As a result, the couple established the Jean-Francois and Catherine Heitz Scholarship/Fellowship Fund in Mechanical Engineering. After making three pledge payments in one year totaling $100,000, the Heitz family recently contributed another $150,000 to bring the endowment up to $250,000. Each year, a portion of the income from the fund will provide merit scholarships and fellowships to students studying mechanical engineering, students who would not be able to attend Carnegie Mellon otherwise.

"I want to make sure that kids who aren't as fortunate as ours can still study," he says.

Jean-Francois isn't concerned whether he or his wife receive recognition for their gift. Overt publicity about philanthropy, he says, marks another cultural difference between the French and the Americans. He has found that giving to charity is much more open and talked about in the United States; French donations are made much more in private.

Perhaps, then, it's no surprise that after he and his wife gave $250,000 to Carnegie Mellon, Jean-Francois never mentioned the donation to the rest of his family. He says he didn't want to "brag about it." Even Fabien didn't know about the gift, laughing when he found out: "I'm not surprised to hear that, knowing him," he says. "He doesn’t like to show off."

Meanwhile, Fabien, who graduated in 2006, is again taking up his father's offer to give him as much education as he desires. After working for three years at Toyota, tinkering with cars, he's resuming his engineering studies this fall in graduate school at Stanford. His dabbling in music continues, too.

Brittany McCandless