It's been sitting on his nightstand for 28 years - its columns streaked with faded highlights, its margins crowded with eager insight - but Van Sturgeon's 1980 edition of The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare is hardly collecting dust.
"I love this book - I have updated editions, but this is the one I read for pleasure," says Sturgeon '81, who majored in political science but took Nan Morrison's Shakespeare class on a whim. "It's always so fun to go back and read the things I wrote in the margins. Some of it just makes me realize how young I was, but sometimes I think, Wow, how did I come up with that?"
It's proof, Sturgeon says, of the intellectual nurturing that he received at the College - thanks, in large part, to the quality and dedication of his professors.
"I can't stress enough the influence the faculty had on me," he says. "My professors were like my surrogate intellectual parents. They taught me so much about learning and life. They taught me to do things I never thought I'd do."
Which is why, in 1994, he set up a scholarship in their honor. Every year, the Thomas Vance Sturgeon Endowed Book Fund buys the textbooks for the self-supporting student with the highest GPA.
"The genesis of the scholarship came from an awareness of how difficult it is to put yourself through school and not know if you'll be able to make it work another semester," says Sturgeon, who worked as an ironworker at the Charleston Naval Shipyard for four years until he was able to save enough money to start at the College full time in 1978.
The first-generation college student continued to work various jobs during his college career, and - even though he managed to excel academically - he knows the toll that financial uncertainty can take, especially when it comes to the high cost of textbooks.
"I wanted to alleviate that burden because I love books, and I don't like the idea that they could hold someone back," he says. "Books should open doors, not close them. For me, books should always, always represent opportunity."
Books aren't the only opportunities that Sturgeon is providing for students. He is also involved with students in the Keystone Program, a partnership between the College and Trident Technical College that opens up some key College resources to qualifying TTC students hoping to transfer to the College. One of those resources is the Learning Strategies course that Sturgeon teaches twice a week.
"For me, I can never give back enough," says Sturgeon. "I will never be able to repay the College for what it's given me. It gave me a new life. It's afforded me things I never thought I'd have."
And there's a constant reminder of that, right there on his nightstand. 