Barbara Elaine Maze, BU assistant dean

“She had a difficult childhood, but no one would know it by looking at her,’’ Carter said. “She was an elegant, soft-spoken, very proper woman, and the grace and compassion she had for individuals belied the difficulties she came through.’’

From an upbringing in a series of foster homes, Mrs. Maze became assistant dean of student affairs at Boston University, working with students in arts programs. As a member of the Board of Governors for Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, she developed the vocal apprenticeship program that helps youths with limited financial means. And she served as president of Project STEP, which nurtures young black and Latino musicians.

Mrs. Maze, who also helped found a local affiliate of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, died Sunday at Newton Health Care Center of complications of diabetes. She was 88 and lived in Dorchester.

“Barbara Maze was an inspiration to us all, and she will be dearly missed, and her legacy celebrated,’’ said Marie-Hélène Bernard, executive director and chief executive of the Handel and Haydn Society.

In 1998, the society created the Barbara E. Maze Award for musical excellence, a $2,000 scholarship awarded to a high school graduate who is an alumnus of the vocal apprenticeship program and intends to continue professional vocal instruction.

“She had a glorious voice,’’ her daughter said. “She was drawn to classical music, and I think her passion was that children could have the classical training that she wanted, but never had.’’

Born in Boston, Mrs. Maze was 10 when she was abandoned by her mother, Carter said. Her father died when she was young.

“She persevered,’’ her daughter said. “She was extraordinarily bright.’’

Mrs. Maze was working in downtown Boston at Filene’s when “she decided she wanted to do more than that with her life,’’ Carter said. She spoke with one of the buyers for the store “and said, ‘I want to be a buyer,’ and she became the first African-American buyer in Filene’s, which was unheard of in that generation.’’

She met and married William Thomas Maze of Boston, and the two attended Boston University, but did not finish their studies. They had a daughter and then Mr. Maze died, leaving Mrs. Maze a widow with a 10-year-old.

“For a brief period of my mother’s life, she was very ill, and we were on welfare,’’ Carter said.

They were living in Washington Elms, a housing development in Cambridge, “and I can remember my mother coming home from the hospital and being upset because her floor was dirty,’’ her daughter said. While Mrs. Maze was washing the floor, “I remember her saying: ‘We will move from here. You will be in a different place. I will work so that we will be in a different place.’ ’’

Within a couple of years, Mrs. Maze had purchased a home in Dorchester and several years later her daughter was studying for her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“When I was a student at MIT, I remember looking out a window at Washington Elms and hearing my mother’s voice saying, ‘You will grow beyond this,’ ’’ Carter said.

Mrs. Maze grew, too. When her daughter started college, “she was determined she was going to finish her education, as well,’’ Carter said.

Through Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., and its affiliate in Cambridge, Mrs. Maze secured college credits for life experience to finish the bachelor’s degree she had started at Boston University years before. She also added a master’s in educational administration and began working in a variety of positions at BU, where she stayed for the next few decades before retiring in 1992.

Her years as an administrator and assistant dean brought her into the lives of many music, theater, and fine arts students at the university.

“Wherever we would go, someone would say, ‘Mrs. Maze, Mrs. Maze’ - it would be one of her students,’’ her daughter said. “The student would say, ‘You made such a difference, I wouldn’t have gotten through Boston University without you.’ ’’

Carter said her mother “was the person at Boston University who was transformational in their lives, who would say, ‘You can do it, and here’s what you have to do to do it, and I will be there, you can come and see me any time.’ But she also was very impatient with people who were not willing to work.’’

Mrs. Maze’s grandson Jonathan Carter of New York City recalled the respect former students would show her during chance encounters while they walked the streets of Boston.

“My Grandma could see talent and nurture it and protect it,’’ he said. “Their work has a piece of her in it. She’s going to live through the creative work of the people whose lives she touched.’’

Augmenting her work at BU, Mrs. Maze served on boards of the Handel and Haydn Society and Project STEP, the string training and educational program launched in the early 1980s by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and other sponsors to provide musical education to black and Latino students.

She joined the Handel and Haydn Society’s board in 1993.

Mrs. Maze’s grandson called her “the sugar of our life. When I called her on the phone, she would warm me with her beautiful speaking voice. She had a gorgeous smile and beautiful eyes that were knowing and sweet. She was at once very strong and very intense, but also very sweet and graceful and lovely.’’

In addition to her daughter, grandson, and her longtime companion Jack Osgood, who lives in Boston, Mrs. Maze leaves two other grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held today at 10:30 a.m. in Marsh Chapel at Boston University. Burial will be Newton Cemetery.