Every year, graduates from the College of Letters & Science enter the workforce and begin to contribute thousands of dollars to their local, state, and national economies. They bring the skills and knowledge they gained at UW-Milwaukee to their jobs, along with their ambitions and fresh perspectives.
In this article series, we highlight some of the recent Letters & Science alumni who have found fulfilling roles in their chosen fields.
Name: Zach Mantyh
Graduation Year: 2021
Major: Classics and Psychology
Job: Assistant of Stewardship and Visitor Engagement at the Basilica of St. Josaphat
Stepping into the Basilica of St. Josaphat on Milwaukee’s south side is a breathtaking experience. The ceiling soars up to graceful dome, stained glass windows dazzle the eye, and the walls are covered in beautiful paintings.
Parishioners visit for Mass, but the basilica is open during the week to anyone who wants to learn its history and explore its architecture. If you drop in for a tour, you just might have Zach Mantyh as your guide.
Mantyh is the Assistant of Stewardship and Visitor Engagement at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, and he’s also a UWM graduate. He chose the university because it was an academically rigorous school close to home. Initially, he started out as a psychology major, but he kept taking elective classes in classics – so many that he added it as a second major. He loved classical literature and history and even took some anthropology courses to make sure he was well-rounded in archaeology too.
“By the end of my four-year program, I was actually more invested in in classics than I was in psychology,” he laughed. “(But) it was definitely a degree I pursued out of passion. … I’m like, man, what I am going to do with this degree?”
Mantyh considered going to grad school, but first he wanted to move to Madison to be with his now-wife and get some work experience. His first three jobs – at an ice cream store, a funeral home, and an HVAC company – had nothing to do with either of his degrees. But when the couple moved home to Milwaukee, Mantyh found his calling.
“We’re parishioners (at St. Josaphat), and we happened to have a good connection with the staff and the current pastor, and this position was opening up,” Mantyh said. “I was in the right place in the right time, and it worked with my background.”
So much of what he learned in his UWM classes shows up in his everyday job, he explained.
“For instance, there’s a lot of Latin inscriptions around the basilica,” he said. “The basilica has so much neoclassical and classical styled art within it. It’s a very historic site. … Part of my job here is I get to lead tours or talk to people, and it’s awesome to be able to share my passion for that history.”
That’s one of his favorite aspects of the job. Because of the historic nature of the basilica and its importance in American Catholic history, St. Josaphat welcomes thousands of visitors from around the world each year. Mantyh has given tours to guests from Poland to Ukraine to Bangladesh and everywhere in between, but it’s just as much fun when he gets visitors from Milwaukee who are visiting St. Josaphat for the first time.
Leading tours is just one part of Mantyh’s job – it’s part of the “visitor engagement” portion of his title. But he also assists with stewardship, which means helping with the day-to-day logistics of the parish, event-planning, fundraising, social media management, and even managing the gift shop operations.
It can be tough to balance the needs of a historic basilica with the modern parish that lives in the building. Mantyh and his coworkers are always looking for ways to accommodate the surrounding community and the parish while working within the constraints of the building’s space.
His UWM education gave him the tools to rise to meet those and other challenges of the job.
“UWM taught me a lot in terms of the range of things you could explore. I had some really wonderful professors who encouraged me to look at history in a more interconnected way,” he said. “When I’m working in a building like this, it’s cool that I can look at a painting or a statue or an inscription and know that it’s all part of the same history. It’s a built-in legacy.”
And while learning the facts are important, Mantyh also hopes that current students will learn to take advantage of internship opportunities and to make personal connections.
“Get to know people in institutions that are related to you,” he advised. After all, that’s how he came to this job. “I’m so fortunate to have this job that I have now and I really love it.”
By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
Basilica of St. Josaphat, at a glance:
- Construction of the basilica began in 1896 and finished in 1901. It was built by Polish immigrants, who volunteered their labor after their traditional workday had ended.
- The basilica was constructed with materials recycled from a demolished federal post office in Chicago. Fixtures like cast iron railings, stones, and even the doorknobs are original to the post office building, and some items still have the post office seal stamped on them.
- The basilica was designed by architect Erhard Brielmaier, famous for having designed more churches in America than any other architect. The design was inspired by St. Peter’s Basilica.
- The basilica’s dome, at the time it was completed, was the second-tallest dome in North America, behind the U.S. Capitol building. The St. Josaphat dome was also the first entirely steel-built dome in America.
- The art inside the basilica is historic in its own right. The vast majority of the tapestry paintings in the basilica were hand-painted by Vatican artist Gonippo Raggi in the 1920s. Much of the artwork is religious, of course, but several pieces are inspired by historical events like the reclamation of Warsaw after World War I.