When you hear Scott Fee’s story — about how he met a guy from South Africa 20 years ago on an Australian safari, how despite being from vastly different worlds the two of them clicked immediately and became friends, about how they kept in touch over all these years and now the South African has asked him to help develop curriculum for a new college that aims to bring sustainable wealth to impoverished villages — you might ask yourself, “Why?”

“My motivation is not altruistic,” Fee said. “I’m not out to save the world.”

He is out, however, to pursue a professional opportunity he knows will probably never come along again.

Fee, chairman of MSU’s construction management department, is working with longtime South African friend Steve Carver to develop curriculum for a fledgling college there called Eden Campus. He, Carver and others are hammering out the basics of what the college’s teachings will be.

For Fee, it is a challenge not unlike the one faced several years ago when he came to MSU.

“There’s was a lot of untapped potential here,” Fee said of the construction management program. “Lots of room for me to make a difference ... Now, I get to create something from the ground floor.”

The story of Fee’s involvement with Eden Campus begins two decades ago in Australia.

He and Carver met in the Outback while on an educational program sponsored by Rotary Exchange. They became friends right away. Even shared a tent together.

When it was over, they stayed in touch, sometimes letting months pass by without contact.

Then last year, while Fee was considering pursuing a Fulbright Fellowship, he and his old friend caught up with each other again.

Fee told Carver about his plans. And Carver told Fee to forget those plans and come work for him. Carver, who comes from a wealthy, activist family, was in the middle of a major endeavor: starting up a college in a part of the world in desperate need of help.

“He wanted to create a place where black students could learn to create sustainable wealth in their hometowns,” Fee said.

Eden Campus is in the South African town of Karatara, a town populated almost exclusively by unemployed whites who live largely on government subsidies. It is surrounded by pockets of black South Africans, all of whom live in shanty towns in the highway medians. Hardly any have access to transportation. Almost all walk wherever they need to go.

The college is in a building that used to be a nursing home, and Carver convinced the city leadership to donate the land to him for use as a college.

Carver then put a call out to 40 communities around Karatara and told them to select one community leader among the city’s college-aged population for enrollment at Eden Campus.