Jocelyne Couture-Nowak

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(CBS/AP)  Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a French instructor at Virginia Tech, was instrumental in the push to create the first French school in Truro, Nova Scotia, where she lived in the 1990s with her husband, Jerzy Nowak, who is the head of the horticulture department at Virginia Tech.

Richard Landry, a spokesman with the francophone school board in Nova Scotia, said Couture-Nowak had two girls.

According to Landry, Couture-Nowak obtained her degree at the teacher's college in Truro in 1989. She taught at a community college and also was a substitute teacher.

A student who identified herself as DeAnne Leigh Pelchat wrote of her gratitude to Couture-Nowak on one Web site. Pelchat wrote in French, "You'll always have a place in my heart."

A scholarship is being established in Couture-Nowak's name at the Nova Scotia Agriculture College, in Truro, where she and her husband worked before moving to Virginia.