PHILANTHROPY
‘Dr. Gabbin will see you now’ Sean Tobin (’92), Joanne Gabbin and the importance of realizing one’s gifts BY M A RT H A G R A H A M (‘ 0 3 P, ‘ 0 8 P, ‘12 P)
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“2.3.” or Sean Tobin, the puzzled look he received in response to the question about his GPA should have been a clue. “You must mean 3.2,” said the administrative assistant. “Nope. 2.3.” “Dr. Gabbin will see you now.” When Tobin sauntered into Joanne Gabbin’s Hillcrest office, he was about to meet someone who would change his life. “So, Mr. Tobin,” said the director of JMU’s Honors Program. “Tell me about yourself.”
A gentle letdown “I came into JMU like most kids who go from having 400 people in their class to suddenly having 2,500,” Tobin remembers. “I was shell shocked from having to live, eat, get to and from classes without help from my family. But I was fired up for all the experiences that JMU offered. … My first semester, I took five Honors classes and a sixth non-Honors course. I pledged my fraternity and was pledge class president. I helped teach a karate club. … I volunteered on campus, helping adults in the community [with] math and English. … I was constantly busy and did not leave enough time for my studies.” Tobin struck Gabbin as “a real personality. … Beyond being a good communicator, Sean was one who could sell you anything,” she says. It didn’t take long for the director to realize she was listening to a talented student who was not meeting his potential. By the time Tobin reached his junior
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Returning the favor
year, Gabbin had to be honest with him— and let him down gently. “I’m sorry, Sean,” Tobin recalls Gabbin saying, ‘‘but mathematically you simply cannot get your GPA above the required 3.25 level by the time you graduate.’’ He had to leave the Honors Program. Tobin’s reaction, by his own admission, was nonchalant: “I was a 20-year-old kid, full of false bravado. And [I] shrugged it off with, ‘OK, that’s fine.’ That’s when Dr. Gabbin let me know: ‘No, it is most certainly not fine. Sean, you have real gifts. You cannot squander them.’” “Aside from my mom,” Tobin says, “Dr. Gabbin was the first person who ever really said that to me. I thought, ‘I have gifts?’ Her words were important. They made me look at myself in a new light—to demand more of myself, to be more confident in these ‘gifts’ this incredible woman thought I had.” Inspired by Gabbin, Tobin earned a finance degree from the College of Business and started a successful career with Lehman Brothers. Today he is a managing director of cross rates sales and runs Deutsche Bank’s San Francisco office.
For some students, the story ends here—graduating and never looking back. “I was one of 10,000 students,” he says, “yet Dr. Gabbin made sure I realized she believed in me. You know how important that is to a young person? To think someone met you, just you … and thinks this highly of you? It blows your mind. But it also sets you up to say, ‘OK, I need to live up to this. I need to succeed—and then I need to give back so that other students know that someone cares about them.’” For more than a decade, Tobin has generously given his time to the CoB’s Board of Advisors and regularly participates in experiential learning trips for students in San Francisco and New York City. He has mentored more than a dozen students, helping many jumpstart careers, offering some of the same advice he received from Gabbin. He has supported athletics, academics, the faculty, scholarships and the arts.
A program to lift all boats Out of gratitude for Gabbin and his lifechanging experience in and out of the Honors Program, Tobin and his wife, Michele, established a planned gift in her honor. The Dr. Joanne Gabbin Professorship in the Honors College is the first professorship in JMU’s newest college. Tobin hopes the professorship will perpetuate in future faculty members the kind of caring and high expectations that Gabbin exemplifies. “I hope,” Tobin says, “future students have a ‘Joanne’ in their lives.” When Gabbin first arrived at JMU to join the English department faculty, the
P H OTOGR A P HS BY M I KE M I R I EL LO (’09 M)