In what can only be called payback for every parent who has spent countless hours driving teenagers to events and activities, Patrick Campion ’83, spent his teenage years doing the opposite.

“My mother went back to community college in her 40s,” he says. “We often had one car, and through all of my teenage years, we were always dropping off and picking her up from school.”

His mother eventually was awarded her master’s degree in hospital administration and had a successful career at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown. Her example, and her unfailing commitment to her children’s education and her own, resonates with her son to this day.

Campion has given $50,000 to the UConn Foundation to establish the Patrick M. Campion Scholarship Fund in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, with a President’s Challenge match that will double the award students receive from his gift. HSBC, Campion’s employer, will also partially match his donation.

Campion worked his way through school, flipping hamburgers in the Student Union on the Friday night late shift. He also was a resident assistant and an assistant in the dean’s office in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“I remember every year all I wanted to do was go to Cape Cod for the summer and my mother said, ‘That’s nice, but you’re going to work in the factory,’ because it paid $10 an hour and we made enough to pay our tuition for the next year,” he says.

He also worked during high school for a family of lawyers in his hometown of Waterbury, becoming immersed in Wall Street and the financial markets so completely that he declared economics as his major at UConn. Now CEO of the U.S. Private Bank at HSBC in Manhattan, Campion is keenly aware of the importance of his gift.

“When the recession hit, I knew that it was probably very difficult for some students to afford college,” he says. “If a student is academically capable of getting into UConn and doesn’t have the resources to pay for it, I think that is a shame and I’d like to help.”

All his life, thanks to his mother’s lead, he has set goals for himself. Now his goal is to help UConn students as they set theirs.

“When I was young, we didn’t have the resources to go to college, and my mother drove us to apply for scholarships and student loans and jobs,” he says. “That enabled me to attend UConn. So I couldn’t be happier that I’ve helped to create this scholarship; it’s the right thing to do.”

For more information about supporting the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, please contact the UConn Foundation’s development department.