As the ivy covering Marquette Hall transforms from a lively summer green to the vivid red, orange and yellow hues of autumn, another season has come and gone. As another year comes to a close, Marquette alumni take a look back on their time on campus and how the university has transformed over the years.

For Sheena Carey, internship coordinator for the College of Communication, her time at Marquette was anything but “run of the mill.” 

Carey graduated from Marquette in 1981 back when Johnston Hall housed the College of Journalism, now the College of Communication. This was a chance for Carey to pursue her passion for reading and writing. 

While juggling college classes, she had to handle being a single mother.

“My daughter and I would walk down Wisconsin Avenue and she would point to Marquette and say, ‘That’s where you live,’ and ultimately she was right,” Carey says. 

Carey says it was the community she felt while on campus that really helped her grow into loving the school.

“For me it was a very nurturing environment. There were moments when I had to bring my daughter on campus. She was embraced by everyone. I could drop her off at the associate dean’s office and she could hang out with him,” Carey says. 

After getting her degree, Carey went back to Marquette for graduate school and had her second child at the time. She joked saying that her children had come to know the faculty on campus better than she did.

Socially, Carey was making friends on campus but because of her living situation, being older than her average class age and having a child, she wasn’t going out and experiencing the night life. But she says she is thankful for the friends she met, who she still keeps in contact with today. 

Although Carey lived off campus for a majority of her time here, her first year she lived in O’Donnell hall.

Patrick McNamara, professor in the College of Engineering, also had his first year in O’Donnell hall. McNamara, graduated in 2006 and although he was at Marquette during a different time than Carey, his experience was just as unique as hers. 

At the time, Engineering Hall wasn’t around so he was working on classes in Olin Engineering and the Haggerty, now the art gallery on campus.

McNamara’s first year on campus was filled with a lot of highs. Living in O’Donnell he said was a great time socializing and meeting new people. 

“At first I was pretty upset that I was living in O’Donnell, I wanted to live in McCormick,” McNamara said, “But it [O’Donnell] was good. It was a good place to study, hang out. Madden was big and we had tournaments. And there happened to be a good amount of engineers there so there was a place to study, have fun and meet friends.” 

McNamara said that some of the people he had met at O’Donnell would become lifelong friends. He attended their weddings and now they meet once every year to come to Marquette and reminisce about the “good old days.” 

McNamara remembers his first-year at Marquette fondly and remembers when Dwayne Wade had led Marquette to the final four in the NCAA tournament. 

“We heard on the TV that it was a tradition to run to the lake. We had no idea cause we were freshman at the time but we went outside…and I remember congregating at 16th and Wells and then the whole mass moved down Wisconsin avenue and everyone pulled over and honked and cheered, it was a neat moment.” McNamara says.

Elizabeth Angeli, associate professor of English, graduated in 2006 as well. Although Angeli’s wasn’t running down Wisconsin Avenue, her favorite moment at school was traveling somewhere off campus.

Angeli studied abroad during her time and she said trip to Rome was full of thrills and wonders. Angeli’s general love for Italian culture was able to spearhead the Italian minor at Marquette. Angeli said her academic experience at Marquette was like no other. Her teachers were very nice and when she returned as a staff member her old teachers would remember her from when she was a student. 

But socially, she said she had a difficult time settling in. Angeli at the time was also a commuter so she wasn’t always in the know. But it wasn’t just living off campus that made it difficult to settle in.

“I had friends who seemed like they had their lives made together … and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” Angeli says. “I saw people were having ‘the ideal college experience’ and it was just never my experience.”

Another thing she didn’t know about herself at the time was that she was gay. Seeing her heterosexual friends fall in love and get married added another element of pressure to the already stressful time.

“I didn’t talk about my sexuality in college because I didn’t know how to figure that out… I felt more comfortable with my professors and the people I worked for because I felt seen. I felt seen in a way that my own classmates weren’t able to see me or I would get brushed off,” Angeli says.

But she will always be fond of the education she received at Marquette, which is why she came back as a faculty member. She said her experience of being queer at Marquette has aided her in being a resource for other students on campus who might have anxieties about their sexuality.

“It is important for me to be out so students feel safe and free to have these conversation and know there are people on campus who once felt like they didn’t belong either,” Angeli said.

This story was written by Connor Baldwin. He can be reached at [email protected].