A fundamental shaper of today’s Quinnipiac University (QU), Patrick “Pat” Healy went from being the first in his family to attend college—walking from the family’s Hamden home to Quinnipiac as a freshman—to fostering QU’s unprecedented growth as senior vice president for finance.

On June 30, the Northford resident retired from a stellar, 43-year career with QU, including 28 years as a key administrative leader. Now, Pat can look back on a body of work that includes having planned and overseen construction and financing which grew QU from one campus to three; while he also fostered generous financial growth and stability for the school.

Under Pat’s financial guidance and shared vision for the school, QU more than doubled its Mount Carmel (Hamden) Campus. He was instrumental in acquiring and building QU’s impressive York Hill campus and the North Haven campus.

Pat engineered the creation of the eight-year-old York Hill campus in Mount Carmel by first gathering three separate pieces of land. Visible for miles around (with impressive views of Long Island Sound from its peak), it is QU’s hilltop home to TD Bank Sports Center, Rocky Top Student Center, and junior and senior student residence halls.

Pat also was instrumental in QU’s 2007 North Haven campus acquisition (the former Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield Campus), developing beautiful facilities including QU’s Medical School, School of Education, and School of Law. In 1992, Pat was key in helping QU acquire the law school from the bankrupt University of Bridgeport, leading negotiations between QU officials, state and local politicians, existing law school faculty, and others.

In addition, in the past 28 years, Pat’s leadership has helped QU’s endowment grow from less than $5 million to about $400 million.

It’s been a pretty amazing run, Pat has to admit.

“I was there in the ‘60’s as a student and it was an entirely different place,” Pat says of then-Quinnipiac College’s Mount Carmel campus. “It was near where I lived. No one in my family had ever gone to college. I didn’t have a car, so I walked to Quinnipiac as a freshman.”

That was 1961. Back then, a semester at Quinnipiac College cost $350 (today, tuition, room, and board hover at $57,000 annually).

“When I went the first year, I ran out of money after the first semester,” says Pat. “It was a good lesson for me as a future CFO, to learn to balance my budget better!”

Pat took a year off from school and joined the Army National Guard, completing six months of active duty. With that he was able to finish college on the GI Bill, graduating with the Quinnipiac Class of ‘66. Pat parlayed his bachelor’s degree in accounting into a six-year career in the general accounting office of the U.S. Controller General in Washington, D.C. During the Vietnam War era, he worked at the White House and Pentagon, among other assignments.

“I was able to work at about 50 different sites and experiences in those six years, including about half a dozen schools, and every time I went to work at a school, I realized that it was nice place to work,” says Pat. “There was intellectual development I was exposed to at the colleges and universities that, when working for the government, you don’t always have.”

That’s about the time Pat told his wife, Linda, that he didn’t want to work for the government for the rest of his life. The news brought the young couple back to Connecticut in 1972.

“She was from a large Italian family and she informed me I could restrict my national search to New Haven,” says Pat, laughing.

The Healys lived in East Haven for three years before moving to their current hometown of Northford in 1975.

Meanwhile, “I had a college classmate at Quinnipiac who hired me back,” says Pat.

Pat started out as a member of QU’s administrative staff in 1972, serving in increasingly important financial roles. He was appointed vice president for finance and administration in 1980. QU has maintained a balanced budget during Pat’s entire tenure, including periods of heavy growth.

Pat says the exceptional growth QU’s experienced in the past four decades came from “shared vision” among its leadership.

“We knew we had to grow and we had to a become a better college, and then become a university, in order to compete in the private market, because the public sector was growing and community colleges were becoming more prevalent,” says Pat. “We grew from one campus to three. We grew into a comprehensive university with stature and proper academic accreditations.”

Today, QU, Yale University and UConn are the state’s only accredited universities offering both medical and law schools. During its growth, QU evolved from offering only undergraduate degrees to include master and doctorate degrees. In athletics, QU graduated from Division II and III sports to Division I.

Today, QU boasts Connecticut’s second largest private campus (next to Yale). Recently, in a national study of all private colleges with $100 million or more endowed (254 schools), QU ranked number one on average return on net assets over a 10-year period (2000-2010).

“That included Yale, everyone,” says Pat of the study. “It was a peer study; we had nothing to do with it. That was an external validation of everything we did.”

Pat’s history of extremely successful audits and outstanding audit reports helped QU launch its excellent ratings with Standard & Poor’s and Mooney. When he started out with QU, “we had no rating,” recalls Pat, who helped bring QU first a B- and now an A- rating.

“That shows your financial strength and stability,” he says, adding, “but it’s certainly important to say that everything we did to grow as a university in size and financial strength was matched by growth on the academic side.”

Pat’s personal academic growth continued as his career developed at QU. In 1990, he earned his doctorate in higher education administration from UConn, having already earned his master’s in business administration from the University of New Haven. For more than 30 of his 43 years with QU, Pat enjoyed teaching QU classes as an adjunct professor. He marks earning his doctorate among his most successful personal accomplishments.

“I am perhaps proudest of getting my Ph.D. as I worked at Quinnipiac and commuted up to UConn at night,” he says. “I was 47 years old, with three kids at the time, and I got the degree. It was difficult, but I think I was good role model for them. When they had homework, they saw me doing homework, too.”

Pat and Linda’s three children were educated through North Branford Public Schools and two of the three pursued and earned their undergraduate degrees from QU (where Linda also worked for 23 years). The year their son graduated from North Branford High School (NBHS) as Student Government president, NBHS was named fourth best for learning excellence in its class nationwide. Pat marked the occasion with a gift to the students of the town.

“I have an endowed scholarship for a North Branford High School graduate who’s going to Quinnipiac University,” he says of the continuing annual scholarship.

Although he’s now retired, Pat says he’ll continue to return to QU to partake of its many cultural, sports, and intellectual programs. He adds he’ll always be proud and thankful to have played a part among those leading QU’s success.

“There was a unity of objective, a unity of planning, among all of us,” says Pat. “It’s a neat legacy. What’s really amazing, when I think about it, is that we all grew in our jobs from a small private school to a major comprehensive university, and we didn’t have to go anywhere! You’ve got to give credit to community as a whole, and also to the staff in general, for helping to make it a success, too. It’s been a great place to work, and to whatever extent I’ve contributed, I’m glad to have helped.”