by Barbara Steinberger

Jim and Karen (Gottschall) Alibrandi in front of their home in Westford, Mass.

Jim Alibrandi's first date with his wife was a real snoozer. In fact, if they had not been so tired on that fateful day in the spring of 1981, they might never have met.

Alibrandi '84, and his wife Karen (Gottschall) Alibrandi '84, graduates of the College of Engineering, both dozed off in an engineering class in Greer Auditorium. Jim awoke long after the class had ended to find the auditorium empty-except for Karen, who was sleeping several rows behind him. He woke her up and walked her back to her residence hall. They began dating the following semester, and they've been together ever since.

"When people ask us how we met, we say 'Yeah, we kind of slept together on our first date'," Jim Alibrandi jokes.
Now, more than two decades later, Alibrandi has been helping to transform the place where he and Karen took their life-changing naps. As president of Interstate Electrical Services, a Massachusetts company founded by his father, Alibrandi has helped design and construct electrical systems for the Integrated Science, Engineering, and Technology (ISET) complex. As part of the first phase of ISET construction, Greer Auditorium was renovated and reopened in fall 2004 as two state-of-the-art lecture halls, Mali 1 and Mali 2. The transformation was made possible by a $500,000 gift from Barney Professor Emeritus Paul Mali and his wife, Mary.

When Alibrandi first entered Greer Auditorium with workers from Interstate Electrical Services, he told them, "You guys don't know this, but this is where I met my wife."

There is something very gratifying, Alibrandi says, about using the education he received in the classrooms of Dana Hall to help refurbish that same building decades later, providing outstanding new facilities for future generations of engineering students. "It's a great way to give back. I feel like I've come full circle," he says.

Karen Alibrandi has put her University of Hartford education to good use as an engineer for Pratt & Whitney and for Raytheon, where she worked on jet engines and defense missile systems. Both Jim and Karen Alibrandi have felt more connected to the university since Jim's company started working on the ISET project. In fact, Karen has gotten back in touch with one of her favorite teachers, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Leo Smith. It was Smith, together with Professor Emeritus Don Leone, who taught the class that sent Jim and Karen off into dreamland 24 years ago.

But Jim Alibrandi is quick to point out that their sleepiness was not a reflection of Smith's and Leone's teaching. He says, "They would shut the lights off and show equations on an overhead projector. It was dark and it was right after lunch. And let me tell you, there's nothing more entertaining than looking at math slides."

A recipe for inducing heavy eyelids? Perhaps. But for Jim and Karen Alibrandi, it turned out to be the most important nap of their lives.