There will be a benefit concert and a Recording Industry Management scholarship in remembrance of a former MTSU student who died in a car accident.

Andrew Durk, who died in a car accident Feb. 1, was a RIM major who attended MTSU for over five years.

"His parents requested that a memorial be made to the Middle Tennessee State University Foundation in anticipation of establishing a scholarship for Andrew," said Kiplynn Todd, assistant director of the Development Office.

"I would like to see at least one student who really wants to go into that program again to get some money," said Fay Durk, Andrew's mother.

Several of Andrew's friends are also planning a benefit concert with all proceeds going to the scholarship fund.

"A bunch of us who were pretty close to Andy and knew that he was constantly trying to bring the music community together thought it would be a great idea if we could pull together and do a show in his honor," said Chris Lloyd, Andrew's friend and an aspiring promoter.

Lloyd said he and several others began planning the non-profit concert when Andrew's parents announced that they had created the scholarship.

Lloyd said he is currently trying to get a venue booked and bands signed on to the project, though it is still in the early planning stages. He said the concert will probably take place near the end of April and feature many local bands who have worked with Andrew.

"If we raise a hundred bucks we're happy, but ideally we always want to raise as much as possible," Lloyd said.

"We're not too worried about getting support from those who knew him, but we're also looking to branch out and find those people who didn't know him and getting them into this concert as a way of bringing the music community together, bit by bit, like Andy wanted to do," Lloyd said.

Both the scholarship and concert will recognize Andrew's passion and ability in working with music.

"He was more of a choreographer, if you will. In other words, he liked putting together a whole picture of something and then have different people work on the parts," Andrew's mother said.

Like the concert, the scholarship is also still in the planning stages. Though Fay Durk and her husband Gordon have not yet made a determination on what type of award they would like to form, according to Todd there are two options.

An annual scholarship would allow donors to provide an annual donation and establish the criteria for how the scholarship is awarded. There is also an endowed scholarship that begins with a $10,000 donation. The interest that is then produced from the endowment is used for awards, Todd said.

The scholarship will go to someone who has the same love for the recording industry as Andrew. His mother said he was passionate about music and Web design, in particular designing Web pages for musical groups. His last project was designing the local music information Web site, Cultiv8.com.

Tim Christensen, who was Andrew's friend and helped create the Web site, said Andrew was "totally into the music scene in Murfreesboro."

About a year ago the two began working on the Web site, though Christensen said Andrew had the idea for Cultiv8.com when he first moved to Murfreesboro eight years ago.

"I don't think [Andy] really realized how much of an impact he made on Murfreesboro and Nashville," he said.

Over 200 people, mainly young people from Murfreesboro, attended Andrew's memorial service last week, his mother said. Andrew's MySpace Web site has also been turned into a sort of memorial with a huge number of recent postings, she added.

Lloyd said Andrew "marched to a beat of his own drum."

"He always had a vision for everything he was doing … He was a very independent person but at the same time he still loved all of us around him," Lloyd said. "He always wanted to help other people achieve their vision, achieve their dreams, while at the same time achieve his own because that was his own - making the community a stronger place."

After attending another school for audio engineering, Andrew came to MTSU. Though he was enrolled in the Recording Industry Management program for five years, he was unable to complete his degree due to personal problems, his mother said.

"Andrew and I came down to MTSU, we looked around the campus, we talked to people, and he said, 'Yeah, this is the right place for me,' and it was," Andrew's mother said, adding that it was still too far from home.

Christensen said Andrew changed from day to day. Of himself, Andrew wrote that the only thing he was sure about was his constantly changing personality.

"I guess I'm pretty hard to figure out. I change a lot. Like every couple months or so there's something new going on in my life," Andrew wrote in the "about me" section of his MySpace Web site. "If I find something in my life that I want to change, I do. Usually, there is no graceful transformation ... it's more like letting go of a spring I've been squishing."

Andrew Durk was born in Massachusetts on Nov. 5, 1979, and died Feb. 1, 2006.