Professor Pietro DiStravolo remembers the first time he stepped onto Alvernia’s campus. “The atmosphere was beautiful and peaceful, and the approach — the friendship and love that the sisters gave their students — was so special,” he recalls. “I decided (if the sisters would keep me) it would be my place for life.”

They decided to keep him, and DiStravolo went on to spend the next 42 years at Alvernia. In those four decades, he has embodied the mission the Bernardine Sisters hoped to instill when they taught the first classes in Francis Hall: a diversity of thought, faith and culture — knowledge joined with love.