Association of Marquette University Women Award Recipient

Mary Neville Bielefeld Award

Michelle DeGuire Harrington, Arts ’92
Wauwatosa, Wis.

Shelley loves being in a job where she can live the Marquette mission almost every day: As an executive assistant of her primary school alma mater, Christ King Parish and School in Wauwatosa, Wis., she says, “I do what I can to bring (Marquette’s) four pillars into everything I do.”

Shelley is from a family of nine children, all of whom hold degrees from Marquette. Her father, Frank DeGuire, Law ’60, taught at and served as dean of the Law School, and she met her husband, David Harrington, Bus Ad ’92, Law ’02, at their freshman orientation. With all that blue and gold history, it’s not surprising that she has given her time and talents volunteering in various ways for the university. For the Association of Marquette University Women, she was a director for 10 years, during which she chaired many of the organization’s major events and served two terms as its president. She also served three years on the Marquette University Alumni Association’s National Board of Directors, as an admissions volunteer for six years and as a member of her 15-year reunion committee. From 2011 to 2016, while two of her five children attended Marquette, Shelley was a director of the Marquette Parents Association.

Before “retiring” to focus on raising her children, Shelley was an elementary school teacher in the Wauwatosa School District for 10 years; she continued to substitute teach for the district and at Christ King School, where all of her children attended. “Dr. Lauren Leslie taught me how to be a teacher,” she says of the College of Education professor emeritus, “and how to make it real.”

Fun Fact: Shelley has never forgotten the kindness of the late Rev. John Raynor, S.J., who invited her and some friends to an ice cream social as freshmen. “He was the most personable person I ever met!” she says of Marquette’s longest-serving president.