The university community is invited to attend a farewell reception for Dolores Pishko and Quent Hietpas ’53, who will retire from Institutional Advancement at the end of the month.
Father Dennis Dease, president, and Dr. Mark Dienhart, executive vice president and chief operating officer, will host the reception from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Monday, June 28, in the Fireside Room, Murray-Herrick Campus Center. A brief program will begin at 3:15 p.m.
Hietpas has been affiliated with St. Thomas for 36 years. He was named in 1983 to the new position of senior vice president for external affairs by Monsignor Terrence Murphy, then president. Hietpas had been an adjunct professor since 1974, when he began teaching the university’s first public relations course in the Journalism Department. He continued to teach until 1990.
In the early 1980s he co-founded, with Father James Whalen, the Master of Business Communication program and the undergraduate concentration in public relations. As senior vice president for external affairs he oversaw two capital campaigns that raised more than $340 million for the university, including funds necessary to open the university's School of Law. Upon completion of the second campaign he agreed to serve as a part-time employee consultant to the university as senior vice president emeritus.
Pishko has worked at St. Thomas since July 1, 1987, the past 19 of those 23 years as Hietpas' administrative assistant. He credits her as being a "super assistant who played a very integral part in both capital campaigns as a result of the sensitive manner in which she dealt day in and day out with scores of benefactors and as an important liaison between the Institutional Advancement staff and the rest of the university."
