A former English professor at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, Pat later served as a hospital chaplain and campus minister in Madison, Wisconsin, where she also worked with survivors of abuse and trauma. For ten years, she served as Civil Rights Director with the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, retiring in 2001. In 2020, Pat began auditing classes at United, grateful to come back full circle to her love of both theology and language. Within a few months, she began coaching United students with writing papers, theses, and dissertations. As a broadening and deepening of that work at the intersection of theology and language, Pat has now been asked to develop and teach a course on theological writing as spiritual practice for incoming students.

Her spiritual memoir, Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground, will be forthcoming from Wildhouse Publishing in 2025.

Education

Doctor of Humane Letters (honoris causa), United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
MA, Religious Studies, Mundelein College (now Loyola University—Chicago)
ABD, English Literature, University of Wisconsin—Madison
MA, English Literature, University of Wisconsin—Madison
BA, English Literature and Writing, with concentrations in Philosophy and Theology, College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University)