For more than half of his life, Patrick Gallivan has been at Saint Michael’s. The college has never mattered more to him, and he’s never mattered more to it.
By Mark Tarnacki Photos by Andy Duback
If friends and perspective constitute wealth, as in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, then Patrick Gallivan ’89, the college’s new development chief, is probably the richest man in Winooski Park.
Gallivan, 42, has spent more than half his life appreciating and advancing Saint Michael’s College from different angles, first as a student leader in the late 1980s, then successively as an admissions officer and alumni relations director.
His appealing good nature, hard work and genuine devotion to the college and greater Burlington community have earned him wide personal and professional respect, leading to his appointment last June as vice president for institutional advancement after a several-month stint as the office’s interim leader.
“Pat Gallivan lives, breathes and dreams Saint Michael’s,” said Jennie Cernosia, recently retired assistant dean of students and student activities director, who convinced the young Gallivan to be a work-study student in her office his first year as a student. In her view, that job made his eventual term as Student Association president foundational to his later career nearly inevitable, given their shared loved “of all things political,” and because of the instant exposure the work gave him to most aspects of the college’s operation over four years, particularly its people.
“That love for Saint Michael’s is apparent in everything he does,” Cernosia said, noting Gallivan’s volunteer work at Camp Ta-Kum-Ta, a camp for children with cancer, his close relationship with priests of the Society of St. Edmund and his gleeful embrace of his Irish heritage. “His enthusiasm about the college and our future is contagious. I feel it, and I am sure others do as well. How can this enthusiasm be lost on our benefactors?”
Passages
As with many trajectories that appear fated in hindsight, Gallivan’s route to a top Saint Michael’s leadership post began with a tentative first step that only later became a wholehearted leap into the life and spirit of the college.
“As a high school student looking at colleges, I had no real feelings toward the state of Vermont other than it was the other end of the universe,” said Gallivan, remembering his youth in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his parents emigrated to from Ireland in the 1950s.
“I applied to maybe five schools in New England, four of them Catholic, although that wasn’t a conscious criterion of mine,” he said. “The biggest deal then was deciding to go someplace so far from home. I most likely would have lived at home if I’d gone someplace closer, so in retrospect it was one of the better decisions that happened, because it forced me to grow up a little.”
Gallivan still vividly recalls the first time he stepped on the Saint Michael’s campus with his parents in the spring of 1985 for an Accepted Students Day program. “It was the classic scene, with the admissions office rolling out the red carpet—and honest to goodness, it was an immediate feeling of comfort around this place, just a vibe that was really appealing to me,” he said.
Still clear in his mind are an inspiring talk and friendly gesture that day from two men he came to regard as quintessential Saint Michael’s personalities. Bill Wilson, who recently retired as vice president for academic affairs and at the time was a political science professor, addressed the visitors on the value of a liberal arts education, and his words have stayed with Gallivan.
“Basically he said that with a liberal arts education, on a Tuesday night, you’ll never be bored because of the all the well-rounded interests you will have developed,” Gallivan said, adding he has found that wisdom to be true. Later during the same visit, economics professor John Carvellas cheerfully introduced himself to the Gallivan family as they wandered campus and offered to walk them over to the financial aid office. “It typifies for me what Saint Michael’s is all about: the personal nature of this place,” Gallivan said.
“I think about all the people I interacted with when I was a student, and what strikes me is how they were all so kind. There’s just a general goodness about how they approached their work, and that was true of the professors, the staff, the priests,” he said. “They were, unbeknownst to themselves, really positive role models. It shows me that you never know the influence you may be having in subtle ways, something I try to remember each time I meet with a prospective student or benefactor.”
Gallivan’s personable style enabled him to make his mark quickly as a young admissions officer right out of college. “Patrick’s always been a great ‘friend-raiser’ for Saint Michael’s College,” said Jerry Flanagan ’71, vice president for enrollment, who hired Gallivan for his first job in 1989 after knowing him as a student tour guide.“I think that’s a great starting point to be an effective fundraiser too.”
Classmate and friend David Kells ’89, a counselor in the Student Resource Center, has a similar view. “It’s good to have somebody like Pat in this job with a background that’s not limited only to professional fundraising, even though he has good experience there too,” said Kells, who has known Gallivan since their first year as students when both were political science majors living in Joyce Hall. Later, they had political internships with their respective Massachusetts state legislators on Beacon Hill at the same time. “He can think outside the box because he’s never been stuck in the box,” Kells said.
President John J. Neuhauser praised Gallivan’s good humor, enthusiasm and energy, calling him a tireless worker. “Patrick never shies away from any task and is always willing to serve as the gracious moderator of choice for any event,” Neuhauser said, alluding to Gallivan’s reputation as a smooth and entertaining master of ceremonies.
At the center of his community outreach has been Gallivan’s volunteer work as a counselor each summer for the last 15 years at Camp Ta-Kum-Ta, a camp for kids with cancer. It’s an experience that he calls his annual “life in perspective week.” He serves on the camp’s board of directors too. “The big issues I have in a given day are not that big compared with what some of these children are dealing with,” he said. “They are inspiring me every day.”
He also chairs the board of trustees at Burlington College, which is a special interest because it serves a constituency that other colleges don’t serve, particularly those who might otherwise not have a chance at college. He has worked closely with that college’s president, Jane Sanders, sharing advice on fundraising, accreditation and other matters. Sanders said she admires Gallivan’s success at building trust between Burlington College’s board and wider community, which she said had not been too strong before he was chairman.
“Patrick really brought the board together and brought the community together,” she said. “He does his work incredibly diligently and thoroughly, and gives back to his community with just as much fervor. He seems to do it all seamlessly and has an innate knowledge of what is really important in this life.”
Once, Sanders said, an assistant in her office heard a fundraising event for Camp Ta-Kum-Ta on the radio and called to make a contribution in Gallivan’s name, knowing it was among his favorite causes. “Oh, just a minute, he’s right here answering phones,” the operator said.
“I think that story illustrates his dedication to the things he believes in, and why he is so perfect to be working for a college where he can be a walking example of what it means to be an engaged member of society and to really take your civic commitment seriously,” Sanders said.
“That’s Patrick. He’s just an all-around wonderful guy and a nice gentleman. It’s hard to even picture him without that great Irish smile.” In service of his devotion to all things Irish, Gallivan has been active for years in Burlington’s Irish Heritage Festival.
He also has a deep affinity for the Society of St. Edmund, dating back to his student days. “I think our chapel’s location in the center of the campus, for me, says it all. It’s the essential point of who we are as an institution,” Gallivan said.
The Very Rev. Mike Cronogue SSE, the Society’s Superior General, was a young campus minister and Gallivan a first-year student when they first met in 1985. “I think I can count on my hand maybe five people who have really felt comfortable just walking in and having dinner with the Society when a student and Pat is one of them. We felt comfortable with him and he felt comfortable with us,” Cronogue said, calling Gallivan “one of the kindest, most dedicated, faithful people I’ve met.”
“He loves the college and is an excellent mission person. He’s very strong in his faith and a very good friend to the Society,” Cronogue said. Gallivan has been a eucharistic minister at the chapel since he was a student, and has been part of many Campus Ministry retreats as a student and employee. He also was a charter member of Pre-Orientation Weekend Retreats (POW) as a student.
Roots
Gallivan, who has a twin sister and also a younger brother and sister, attended Worcester’s public schools through high school. His local Catholic parish was a focal point for his and other Irish families, and Gallivan was an altar boy and active in youth groups there. The pastor Rev. Martin Donahue ’52 was a Saint Michael’s alumnus and some older high school acquaintances had enrolled, putting the college faintly on his radar by senior year, he said.
His father worked in the power plant for Norton Company, a large Worcester-based manufacturing firm, and Gallivan’s enrollment at Saint Michael’s made him the first person from his family to attend college, carrying with it a sense of both extra pride and extra responsibility, Gallivan said.
With regular family trips to Ireland when he was growing up, Gallivan developed a love of travel and studied abroad for a semester of his junior year at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. There he lived with an Irish family and took courses in Irish literature, politics and sociology, along with 20 other Americans in the program. “My grandmother was still alive at the time, so I actually spent the student travel weeks with my family from both sides,” he said.
When he returned to campus, he ran for Student Association president and won. With his keen interest in politics and campus issues, Gallivan was a regular and prominent presence at the Student Association’s weekly Tuesday meetings even as a first-year student, and as the body’s president senior year, he solidified his skills running meetings and mediating competing interests.
He still can be found at SA meetings on Tuesday evenings volunteering as a moderator and adviser, long after most faculty and staff have left campus for home. He assumed those roles in 1992 to stay abreast of campus life and student issues when he was a young admissions officer, and has done it ever since.
Gallivan said the worthy institutional advancement he witnessed at Saint Michael’s when he was a student was dramatic and inspirational, with St. Edmund’s Hall rising from a field to become the centerpiece of campus academic life by his senior year. That greatly upgraded students’ experience by moving most classes from North Campus to Main Campus.
A Program for Advancement
In his new position as vice president for institutional advancement, Gallivan said he plans to continue emphasizing the strong relationships with alumni and benefactors that he has been developing since early in his career.
“I really started to know today’s alumni as part of my admissions job, which I did for nine years (1989–1998) because you’re always calling people or meeting them at college fairs and interviews. And all those people I helped recruit became alumni.”
Later, as director of alumni and parent relations, he was one of the key people responsible for the success of the Visions Campaign, which wrapped up in 2005. He said during his time in that position the advancement team always took a shared approach to projects, which he wants to continue.
“For the last 10 years, my job has been to bring people closer to Saint Michael’s, which continues to be my primary responsibility, with somewhat different objectives,” he said.
But advancement involves more than just fund-raising in Gallivan’s view. “It’s also being part of the conversation on ways we can be a better educational institution and live our mission more broadly—helping to ask those questions,” he said. “We’re one of the offices on this campus that has an external view on the world, and we need to use that advantage, to listen to the people we’re out meeting with, to hear about things happening outside the bounds of Saint Michael’s, and then hopefully bring back whatever will help the college evolve into the best place it can be,” he said.
“The more alumni I meet, the more inspired I am about what this college does,” Gallivan said, recounting recent conversations with several alumni who have been caring for sick parents in challenging circumstances or working overseas to make the world a better place.
He encouraged alumni to “think about their own experience at Saint Michael’s and what made it so good, so strong.” He thinks that too often, people “take for granted the experience they have, not realizing their experience is made better by those who have come before them.”
“In many cases you’re not even going to know the people who provided financial assistance to help you attend Saint Michael’s, or the person that built a building so that you would have a better experience around here,” he said. “So it’s imperative for me, for advancement, to make sure people have that understanding.”
“It’s also imperative for us to teach students that lesson early on, so when they leave here, they understand they have the obligation to do the same for somebody else,” he said. “That, to me, is the core of what we’re trying to do.”
