https://setonhall.rivals.com/
By Colin Rajala
Colin: I know in your new role that you are tasked with overseeing facilities and operations, human resources, strategy and the office of the President on top of athletics. How has the transition been to your new position and what has it been like to work alongside Dr. Joseph Nyre?
Pat: It’s been a fascinating change actually. I have been an athletic director practically my whole life and I just thought I would always be an AD. To be honest, I would have been ecstatic to be the AD at Seton Hall for the rest of my career. I found a home at Seton Hall. Seton Hall took me in, and I loved my role. You’ve heard me say in the past that I thought I had the greatest job in the world. We have 250-260 kids in our athletic programs and I am on a first name basis with all of them every year. My door is always open and it is a great family type of environment. You don’t get that in many athletic departments in the country.
The transition to my new role was interesting. I did not work with Dr. Nyre at Iona, like a lot of people may think. He started at Iona about three months after I had left so we knew of each other, I had been to a dinner or two with him and some familiar people, but we had not worked together. When he was named president at Seton Hall we got together and what I can only imagine was a momentary lapse of judgement, he asked if I would consider this position. I looked at it from the standpoint that anything you do, you want to make sure you are bringing value and making sure that you’re bringing something to the table that can make a difference. I also felt like the timing was right for it. I thought that if I was in this role for him that I could really help Dr Nyre out and traverse the landscape at Seton Hall and help execute. I am involved all over the place now, so it’s been interesting to say the least.
The difference in the job between AD and this now is it’s just a different rhythm. It’s not good, not bad, not better not worse, just a different rhythm. In athletics you are going 24/7 for months and months without a day off and you don’t think twice about it because it’s a passion, it’s not a job. This job has that same feel, but it’s a different rhythm to executing everything. Luckily, Dr. Nyre is like me and likes to do a lot of research and then get it done as quickly as possible.
I am a three-time grad from Iona, so I spent a lot of time and have some close friends there and heard nothing but phenomenal things about him and how much of a visionary he was. I have also had a chance to go back and see the progress he made at Iona. Seeing all the things he did, I was excited when Dr Nyre decided to come to Seton Hall and was excited to have this new role working with him directly.
Q: It’s been interesting to see the early work you guys have done pre and post-pandemic onset. Beginning with the early stages of planning the strategic vision for the institution and mobilizing to handling the global pandemic’s effect on the university and its community. How has it been navigating all of this over your first year?
A: When Dr Nyre came in right away we came together as a cabinet and everything was fully transparent with shared governance and that has been one of the best things about the way we operate. It’s a shared idea with input from numerous constituencies. As soon as we started this new team, this new cabinet, we realized we needed to have a real strategic plan for the future, something the university hadn’t had in some time. We wanted to take into account all across the university with input from as many people as possible and create something that everyone believed in. We had lots of committees and groups to help guide the vision.
At the same time as the strategic planning, we began a feasibility study for a capital campaign because Seton Hall hasn’t had one in 12 to 15 years, which is unheard of in higher education. Normally in higher education you’re in a campaign and as that is wrapping up you are already starting a silent campaign and finding the next donors for the new campaign.
That had been the majority of the work pre-March. Then March hit and if you had ever told me that we would be sitting at the Marriott in New York City the day of the Big East Tournament quarterfinals and it would be canceled, I would have said no way that’s possible. To that point, when it hit it was crazy. Obviously, this is unlike anything we have ever experienced before. Because of the culture we have at Seton Hall, it was all hands-on deck. As a cabinet we were meeting four times a day in long meetings surveying where things were across the state and planning for every possible scenario with students leaving campus and remote learning. I want to say that after about a month, the senior leadership team was still meeting around twice a day. More recently we're down to three meetings a week. My point in saying all of that, beginning in mid-March, we formed groups to work on different aspects of campus operations, which allowed us to bring in a lot of people to have more informed decisions on why we were doing what we were doing. We probably had 200 people or more working together to get us through the rough onset of all of this. The transparency and shared governance really helped us make the right decisions along the way and going forward.
I think it was also one of the reasons why we were one of the leaders coming out with our restart plans. We didn’t set out to put a stake in the ground and be the first one to roll out plans. It was a bi-product of us planning and getting everything in order that we could. Obviously, everything will be determined by the state guidance, but assuming the state gives guidance that parallels somewhat with our plan, we will execute or adapt our plan.
Q: That is great to hear. It just makes sense to have some of the plan in place because then it allows you to move things around to fit the government mandates and models or new scenarios that may arise.
A: Plus, our community wanted to know what was happening. Our students, who are the most important thing to our university, our faculty, our administration, everyone wants to know what we are doing. You want to be able to get as many questions answered as quickly as possible that you can. We still have a ways to go with the planning but now that we have more guidance from the state we will continue our planning.
Q: I applaud that because I think that it really helps create some calmness and sense of normalcy, which is something people are craving and obviously quite helpful.
A: I will say, in your career there are moments you say you will never forget and that week in March I will be able to pinpoint forever. Dr. Nyre and I got into the city Monday for meetings, making the rounds with donors and board members, the usual Big East Championship week. Tuesday afternoon we started to sense that this could disrupt the tournament and after a fundraiser Tuesday night at a restaurant that is when I really sensed that people were worried and this thing was real. After the event, Dr. Nyre, Bryan Felt and I were on a Big East call and it really hit that this is a real possibility. Come Wednesday, we told the Marriott that we needed a room that we can go in and have everyone there to be at the table. We we’re all there from 7 a.m. just monitoring everything and jumping on calls with the Big East and administrators. I won’t forget those 24 hours.
By Colin Rajala
Colin: I know in your new role that you are tasked with overseeing facilities and operations, human resources, strategy and the office of the President on top of athletics. How has the transition been to your new position and what has it been like to work alongside Dr. Joseph Nyre?
Pat: It’s been a fascinating change actually. I have been an athletic director practically my whole life and I just thought I would always be an AD. To be honest, I would have been ecstatic to be the AD at Seton Hall for the rest of my career. I found a home at Seton Hall. Seton Hall took me in, and I loved my role. You’ve heard me say in the past that I thought I had the greatest job in the world. We have 250-260 kids in our athletic programs and I am on a first name basis with all of them every year. My door is always open and it is a great family type of environment. You don’t get that in many athletic departments in the country.
The transition to my new role was interesting. I did not work with Dr. Nyre at Iona, like a lot of people may think. He started at Iona about three months after I had left so we knew of each other, I had been to a dinner or two with him and some familiar people, but we had not worked together. When he was named president at Seton Hall we got together and what I can only imagine was a momentary lapse of judgement, he asked if I would consider this position. I looked at it from the standpoint that anything you do, you want to make sure you are bringing value and making sure that you’re bringing something to the table that can make a difference. I also felt like the timing was right for it. I thought that if I was in this role for him that I could really help Dr Nyre out and traverse the landscape at Seton Hall and help execute. I am involved all over the place now, so it’s been interesting to say the least.
The difference in the job between AD and this now is it’s just a different rhythm. It’s not good, not bad, not better not worse, just a different rhythm. In athletics you are going 24/7 for months and months without a day off and you don’t think twice about it because it’s a passion, it’s not a job. This job has that same feel, but it’s a different rhythm to executing everything. Luckily, Dr. Nyre is like me and likes to do a lot of research and then get it done as quickly as possible.
I am a three-time grad from Iona, so I spent a lot of time and have some close friends there and heard nothing but phenomenal things about him and how much of a visionary he was. I have also had a chance to go back and see the progress he made at Iona. Seeing all the things he did, I was excited when Dr Nyre decided to come to Seton Hall and was excited to have this new role working with him directly.
Q: It’s been interesting to see the early work you guys have done pre and post-pandemic onset. Beginning with the early stages of planning the strategic vision for the institution and mobilizing to handling the global pandemic’s effect on the university and its community. How has it been navigating all of this over your first year?
A: When Dr Nyre came in right away we came together as a cabinet and everything was fully transparent with shared governance and that has been one of the best things about the way we operate. It’s a shared idea with input from numerous constituencies. As soon as we started this new team, this new cabinet, we realized we needed to have a real strategic plan for the future, something the university hadn’t had in some time. We wanted to take into account all across the university with input from as many people as possible and create something that everyone believed in. We had lots of committees and groups to help guide the vision.
At the same time as the strategic planning, we began a feasibility study for a capital campaign because Seton Hall hasn’t had one in 12 to 15 years, which is unheard of in higher education. Normally in higher education you’re in a campaign and as that is wrapping up you are already starting a silent campaign and finding the next donors for the new campaign.
That had been the majority of the work pre-March. Then March hit and if you had ever told me that we would be sitting at the Marriott in New York City the day of the Big East Tournament quarterfinals and it would be canceled, I would have said no way that’s possible. To that point, when it hit it was crazy. Obviously, this is unlike anything we have ever experienced before. Because of the culture we have at Seton Hall, it was all hands-on deck. As a cabinet we were meeting four times a day in long meetings surveying where things were across the state and planning for every possible scenario with students leaving campus and remote learning. I want to say that after about a month, the senior leadership team was still meeting around twice a day. More recently we're down to three meetings a week. My point in saying all of that, beginning in mid-March, we formed groups to work on different aspects of campus operations, which allowed us to bring in a lot of people to have more informed decisions on why we were doing what we were doing. We probably had 200 people or more working together to get us through the rough onset of all of this. The transparency and shared governance really helped us make the right decisions along the way and going forward.
I think it was also one of the reasons why we were one of the leaders coming out with our restart plans. We didn’t set out to put a stake in the ground and be the first one to roll out plans. It was a bi-product of us planning and getting everything in order that we could. Obviously, everything will be determined by the state guidance, but assuming the state gives guidance that parallels somewhat with our plan, we will execute or adapt our plan.
Q: That is great to hear. It just makes sense to have some of the plan in place because then it allows you to move things around to fit the government mandates and models or new scenarios that may arise.
A: Plus, our community wanted to know what was happening. Our students, who are the most important thing to our university, our faculty, our administration, everyone wants to know what we are doing. You want to be able to get as many questions answered as quickly as possible that you can. We still have a ways to go with the planning but now that we have more guidance from the state we will continue our planning.
Q: I applaud that because I think that it really helps create some calmness and sense of normalcy, which is something people are craving and obviously quite helpful.
A: I will say, in your career there are moments you say you will never forget and that week in March I will be able to pinpoint forever. Dr. Nyre and I got into the city Monday for meetings, making the rounds with donors and board members, the usual Big East Championship week. Tuesday afternoon we started to sense that this could disrupt the tournament and after a fundraiser Tuesday night at a restaurant that is when I really sensed that people were worried and this thing was real. After the event, Dr. Nyre, Bryan Felt and I were on a Big East call and it really hit that this is a real possibility. Come Wednesday, we told the Marriott that we needed a room that we can go in and have everyone there to be at the table. We we’re all there from 7 a.m. just monitoring everything and jumping on calls with the Big East and administrators. I won’t forget those 24 hours.
