Associate's Degree to Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees and Full-Time Instructional Assistant

AA, BA, Grad Degree

For Josh Morgan (AA ’18, BA ’20, MA ’23), Arrupe College started an entire chain of events that now finds him working full-time and obtaining a master’s degree at night. Approaching the end of his high school’s senior year, he was looking for schools that would be a good fit.

“My dad and some of my high school teachers helped me sort through colleges and Arrupe came up,” says Morgan, who has an intellectual disability that can make it difficult for him to remember things. “I started reading about the school and the support system they put in. I thought it might be the perfect place for me.”

“Part of Arrupe’s mission is cura personalis, care for the whole person, and they encourage all students to pay that forward.”

ENGAGING COURSE LEADS TO MAJOR

A highlight of Morgan’s time at Arrupe was enrolling in Professor Shannon Gore’s Oral Communication course which sparked his interest in communication.

“I loved her style and how approachable she was,” he says. “I really got into communication just from the work I did with her.”

He went on to take two more courses from her and was so interested he enrolled in Loyola University Chicago’s School of Communication after graduating from Arrupe in 2018.

While there, he was selected to be on a student committee that drafted questions to ask Pope Francis during his historic virtual dialogue, Building Bridges North-South, with university students. Morgan, who volunteered for several semesters at a refugee resettlement organization RefugeeOne, says that experience informed his contributions to the committee.

“My time spent volunteering with forcibly displaced migrants really guided me through all of those conversations.”

PAYING IT FORWARD

Morgan is now working full-time while receiving his Masters of Arts in Social Justice virtually from Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Pastoral Studies. He relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina to work as an instructional assistant at Bailey Wick Road Elementary—where he’s specifically supporting children with intellectual disabilities.

In his role, Morgan is provided with student learning goals and is then given a lot of autonomy to help students reach those goals.

“Whether students have a good day or a bad day, I always want to find whatever they’re struggling with and get them through it even if that means finding a novel way to work around a challenge to ensure that they can jump over that hurdle.”

Morgan hopes to go into teaching students with autism after receiving his master’s degree.

“Part of Arrupe’s mission is cura personalis, care for the whole person, and they encourage all students to pay that forward,” he says. “I really hope I'm living up to that through the work I’m doing in the classroom.”

She was also an orientation leader, business administration senator, secretary for the Running Club and a member of Arrupe's Business society.

One of the biggest highlights while on campus was getting to know Arrupe’s director of employer relations and recruiting who ultimately encouraged her to apply for Year Up, a job training program that closes the opportunity divide.