Malpass Fellows

In 2022, University alumnus, and former University Chief Investment Officer, Scott Malpass pledged a gift to the Alliance for Catholic Education in support of the Frassati Internship. In recognition of his generous gift, selected undergraduate students are named Malpass Fellows. Malpass Fellows are hardworking, flexible, and service-minded. They take initiative and are eager to contribute to the mission of their assigned partner organization. While all Notre Dame students are invited to apply, special consideration will be given to rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the Mendoza College of Business.

Interested in Becoming a Malpass Fellow?

Pier Giorgio Frassati, a soon to be saint, was an ordinary man who lived out his faith in extraordinary ways over the course of his short life on Earth. Born into a wealthy family in Turin, Italy in 1901, he studied intensely at the best academies to become a mechanical engineer. Frassati’s passions were wide and varied - he was an outdoorsman, a mountaineer, a political protester, and a jokester. However, his deepest passion was his love of the poor.

There are many accounts confirming Frassati’s dedication to the marginalized. He was often scolded by his mother for arriving late to dinner, but what she did not know was that he had spent his afternoon serving the hungry and then running home after giving away his bus money. Pier’s father would reprimand him for returning home without his coat not knowing that he gave it away. Pier Giorgio Frassati contracted polio from his work with the poor and died at the age of 24. His commitment to those in need was apparent even in his death as he scribbled a message to his friend with his paralyzed hand for medicine to be taken to a poor sick man that Frassati had been visiting.

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati embodied the integrated lifestyle that we strive for at ACE, Notre Dame, and in the Congregation of Holy Cross at large. In the words of Blessed Basil Moreau, “...the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart. While we prepare useful citizens for society, we shall likewise do our utmost to prepare citizens for heaven.” On the famous photo of Frassati’s final climb he wrote the words “verso l’alto” meaning “to the heights.” His entire life was dedicated to this climb towards the top, towards heaven. In this way, Frassati’s life inspires our Malpass Fellows so that their career, personal life, and faith life are indistinguishable from one another, but instead each inform the other.