Susan Hannifan, from college to counseling

PVCC offers a wide variety of counselors and advisers for students to meet with for guidance throughout their time at the college, but one in particular specializes in working with people with disabilities.  Susan Hannifan, the disabilities service counselor at PVCC, has her office in M125 and is always happy to set up an appointment to help a student in need. Her office gives off the appearance of a homey living room, browns and maroons mixing with a soft yellow glow from a table lamp, and she talks to everyone as if she were talking to a dear friend. However, although she loves her job, it was not what she went to college for. In fact, she thought she was going to be a teacher.

Her family emigrated from the Azores and raised her, along with her younger brothers, in Rhode Island. Being the oldest child, she was the first to graduate from college, but she found herself at a loss when it came to what career she wanted to pursue. She said that there were only three choices for women at the time: teacher, secretary, or nurse. From her limited options, she chose teaching and enjoyed the first two years as an undergrad. However, when she became a junior and started taking more classes specific to teaching, she began to realize her mistake. It became clear to her that she did not want to be a teacher when she began student teaching in an inner city fourth grade classroom; the cement walls felt like a prison to her. 

“I really didn’t feel like this was the career for me,” Hannifan said. “I could feel it in my gut.”

She informed her teacher about her predicament, and then her parents, who offered her a piece of advice that she would carry with her throughout her life.

“If you are not happy on the job, you won’t be happy in life,” Hannifan remembered her parents saying. She recalled that her parents followed it with how they were not going to pay for her college beyond the credits for her teaching degree. She said it taught her two important life lessons: that her parents were supporting her, but also that she was responsible for the consequences of her own actions.

Once she was no longer pursuing a teaching career, she set her sights on something that called to her heart from the start. While taking classes for her old degree, she volunteered at a group home for boys and discovered her love for helping others. This ended up becoming her first job, although not at the same group home. With her new degree in social work, she worked at a hospital, a rehabilitation clinic, community-based organizing, and finally as a vocational rehabilitation counselor. 

During this career, she moved to Virginia and earned a master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling, a degree that focused on disabilities and inclusion in the workplace and in society, before being offered her current position at PVCC.

Although she’s had many jobs in her lifetime, she finds her work at PVCC to be one of the most fulfilling, and looks forward to continuing to help students thrive, and to help those with disabilities feel welcome and accommodated.