“Walking in the outdoors is the only thing that takes me away from the thoughts of my daily activities. After a half-hour or 45 minutes, it’s very restorative of my energies. Hiking isn’t competitive, and since I am a reflective person, it gives me the time to think about long-range plans. Actually, ever since I was a teenager I walked on a trail, through a forest, on the ridges of a mountain…I make most of my important decisions on my feet. I even pray better on my feet.”

His zeal for walking goes back to childhood, Msgr. Barrett realizes when recalling inspirations that formed the groundwork for his calling. “I grew up in the Inwood section of Manhattan, above the Cloisters. I was an only child, with the self-sufficiency that only-children have,” he says. “Right at the end of my block there was a park and hilly woodlands, and you could walk for hours. The Hudson River was four blocks away. You lived in the city, where there was the camaraderie of the apartment house, and yet the river and the woodlands were right there. The population was 80 percent German-Jewish and 20 percent Irish, and they had formed their Catholic parishes in the late ’20s. In this very formative neighborhood there were three ideals: education, religious belief and taking care of your neighbor….

“It was in my teenage years that a religious sense began to develop. I was always interested in the priesthood but I didn’t know I wanted to be a priest. The full awareness came when I was in my early twenties. Most things important in my life have come slowly to my awareness…

“Deciding to have a relationship with God isn’t something never revisited. I reaffirm the decision I made every day because the priesthood, unlike any other choice, has infinite qualities. You never become a total success. There is no Pulitzer Prize. You’ve taken on the job of representing the Divine, of making God present. Of course you really can’t do that and you fail.” Theoretically agreed, but in the eyes of the Church, he does not disappoint; in 1995, he was appointed Prelate of Honor to Pope John Paul II with the title of monsignor.

Having made his choice with the conviction of his faith and the full support of his family (his mother was a housewife and his father managed Con Edison’s business offices), Msgr. Barrett found his expectations to be realistic: “Being a priest is the only selection where your entire life changes. That was something I felt I could do, and I did it…You see daily the impact you can make on people’s lives. You make friendships with other priests and parishioners, so you never feel alone. That’s how I feel here [at the College] and that’s important to me. Although I could live within a certain level of solitude, I never wanted to be alone.”

So following graduation from Cathedral High School in Manhattan, he entered St. Joseph’s Seminary and College in Yonkers where he earned undergraduate and master of divinity degrees and was ordained. There was a faculty adviser there who got him interested in psychotherapy, a subject he decided to pursue in earnest. Putting himself in overdrive, he was studying for the ministry, tacking on a M.S.Ed. in counseling from St. John’s University in Queens and working as an intern at the archdiocesan Family Consultation Service, all at the same time. Being a therapist, Msgr. Barrett recalls, was indeed satisfying, as were his parish duties in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx.

The interval did not last long. Unbeknownst to him, the head of the Department of Health and Hospitals for the Archdiocese of New York was looking for an assistant. It was 1976, and Msgr. Barrett soon found himself as associate director of health and hospitals and a student at Columbia University studying for a master’s in public health.

But after five years and with the degree under his belt, he decided he really did want to work with people on a more pastoral basis and moved to resurrect the counseling career. “Terence Cardinal Cook responded not by sending me back to a parish, but by getting me involved in chaplaincy services,” he recounts. “This was his way of assuring that Catholics in non-Catholic hospitals would receive the services they needed.” Appointed director of the Hospital Apostolate for the Archdiocese, he was put in charge of all Catholic hospital chaplains, in non-Catholic as well as Catholic hospitals. It was a job that allowed him to complete his education with a doctor of ministry degree in pastoral care at New York Theological Seminary.

All along, Msgr. Barrett had been serving as a board member of dozens of organizations like the Greater New York Hospital Association and Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New York. When New York Medical College rang in 1988, Msgr. James P. Cassidy was on the line. A Board of Directors member, Cassidy was to be named chancellor and the board wanted Barrett to take his place. Four years later it was Barrett’s turn to lead. Initially chosen to head up the search committee when Cassidy was called to the Vatican, Barrett was asked to stop looking and accept the presidency himself.

“First and foremost the College needed a planning process that would enable us to restate our mission of education and teaching and articulate our priorities. It also would allow us to get everyone together, to open avenues of communication so we could understand our strengths and determine what needed to be changed,” he explains. He commissioned the Strategic Plan and follow-up reengineering process, whose successful legacy was financial stability and a realignment of resources that made for real savings and the use of money where it was most needed: “Our original target had been $3 to 6 million. It actually worked out to about $9 million, way over goal. To this day we are still monitoring the Strategic Plan and implementing reengineering. It’s become a part of the culture here in the way we look at making short-term and long-term decisions at the College.”

After seven and one-half years as president, Msgr. Barrett can tally substantial measures of success:

A broadened scope, from region-al to national-“By identifying our first priority as education, we have elevated the level of student quality and embarked on upgrading the infrastructure by building the Learning Center and the Medical Education Building, now under construction. We knew we had to fix these resource issues or risk being cited by the LCME [Liaison Committee on Medical Education]…Incidentally, in our most recent LCME review [of the Medical School] last fall, communication between administration and faculty, previously cited as a weakness, was praised as a strength,” he says. In another review of all three schools that was important for its standing, the university succeeded on its first pass (1995) in winning accreditation by the Committee on Higher Education/Middle States Association of College and Schools.

A greater effort on the part of Development-This led to the birth of the President’s National Advisory Council composed of prominent alumni with national reputations, and the President’s Circle, whose members pledge to donate $2,000 annually to the College.

Fulfillment of Admissions’ goal to raise the quality of students, as evinced by the much-above average pass rate on Step I of the boards-including two consecutive years at 100 percent-for second-year medical students. The focus now is on boosting current research endeavors from $30 million to the $40 - $50 million range.

Better image and attitude, both personal priorities-His relent-less agenda extended to myriad community conferences and “President’s Breakfast” for employees, and an improved student outlook due to steady upgrades in facilities and the planned Medical Education Center building. The WCBS radio campaign promoting the university and its quality alumni was financed by his President’s Circle discretionary fund. And hiring an inspired dean, Ralph A. O’Connell, M.D., who lured five prestigious chairmen to fill departmental vacancies, was the icing on the cake.

While New York Medical College is the longest assignment on Msgr. Barrett’s CV, he denies a seven-year itch. “I’m not going anywhere. My plan is to stay here as long as I think, the board thinks, and the College community thinks I’m doing a good job. Living in an academic environment is sustaining and challenging,” he says. “I’m still happy coming to work-most days.”