Christopher R. Bernier of Waterbury Center, formerly with Tubbs Snowshoe Company in Stowe, has been named Assistant Director for Alumni & Parent Relations at Saint Michael's College. The 2004 Saint Michael's College graduate started at the college last week.
"My goal has been to work with people in a capacity that I'm passionate about-and I'm passionate about Saint Michael's College," Bernier said. "I had such a great experience as an undergraduate at Saint Michael's that I look forward to connecting people to the college and helping the college thereby."
Bernier will be building relationships for Saint Michael's through various means-alumni events on campus and off, communications outreach online and in person, and through social networking. He will work especially with alumni volunteers whose outreach will multiply the college's connections. His focus will be on Reunion classes, as well as on alumni in the Baltimore-Washington area, Hartford and Southern Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Albany, N.Y., New Hampshire and greater Portland, Maine.
After graduation, Bernier worked for a year in 2004 as a portfolio strategist with Dion Money Management in Williamstown, Mass., near his hometown of Cheshire, Mass. He then moved into sports marketing with Fuse Integrated Sports Marketing (2005), Hoback Sports of Jackson, Wyoming (2005-2006), Raceway Media of North Adams, Mass., (2006-2007); Tubbs Snowshoe Company of Stowe (2007-2008), and Point6 LLC, for their merino wool sock program (2008).
Bernier is on the board of directors of Crag VT (Climbers Resource Access Group) of Richmond, Vt., a volunteer organization that works to keep outdoor areas accessible to climbing. He is also a volunteer with the Special Olympics. An outdoor enthusiast, Bernier has twice run the Vermont City Marathon, and enjoys all kinds of distance running, snowboarding, ice/rock climbing and cycling.
Chris is the son of Patricia and Robert Bernier of Cheshire, Mass.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.