Paying It Forward

By Maureen McLellan

It has become a familiar story at Fairfield University: Boy meets girl (or girl meets boy), both graduate, and then get married. Sean Harrigan and Maureen (O'Connor) Harrigan, both '75, are among the growing number of people who come to campus in pursuit of knowledge and leave with the unexpected bonus of a life partner.

"That was probably the best thing that ever happened to me," says Sean, recalling that the two met as freshmen through a friend. Sean and Maureen now have three sons, one of whom is a sophomore at Fairfield. "It was the only school he wanted to go to," says Sean, adding that he never pushed any of the boys toward his alma mater. "I think Kevin basically looks at the life Maureen and I have with him and his brothers, and realizes a lot of that came out of Fairfield."

Today, Sean is senior vice president of corporate finance for Commerzbank AG in New York City, and Maureen is a nurse working in public health, primarily making home visits to people with Alzheimer's Disease. Both are proud of Fairfield's steady growth over the past 26 years and hope their contribution to Our Promise: The Campaign for Fairfield University will help keep up the momentum. They have pledged $25,000 in support of the Campaign's facility agenda and Annual Fund.

Maureen remembers that when she arrived at Fairfield from Long Island as a nursing student, Fairfield drew applicants primarily from the tri-state area. She sees alumni support as an important way for the University to boost its profile and continue to diversify the student population.

"If your name is starting to get out there, you'd better have the programs and the facilities to match that name," she says.

Maureen says Fairfield offered her the chance to pursue both a career in nursing and a bachelor's degree - no easy task in the 1970s when few nursing schools offered baccalaureate programs. She was also eager to attend a co-educational university.

Both she and Sean stay in touch with several friends from their undergraduate days, and they are thankful for the opportunities Fairfield afforded them for personal as well as intellectual growth.

For Sean, who graduated from Xavier High School in Concord, Massachusetts, Fairfield seemed like a large, exciting place. Vivid in his memory, he says, is "being off on your own and being able to experience what, at that time, was an entirely different world. The professors, both lay and Jesuit, had experiences you could never really imagine growing up in a small town. Those were life-shaping events." Now, he says, is the time for his family to do its part to help shape Fairfield's future.

"Having been given and afforded all of that, it seemed like the right thing to do," says Sean.