Alumna Carrie Potter-Murray wanted to continue her involvement at the University because it was like her own personal Hogwarts, a wizard school in her favorite book series Harry Potter.
"I think [Point Park] was what saved me, what made me feel like me and what made me become who I am,” Potter-Murray said. “If I had gone to a different school, I probably would have just been swept up with everybody else. I feel like I had the opportunity and the motivation to do well and to try and do good things here. So even after I graduated, I still felt that pull."
The pull was so strong for Potter-Murray that when she was received a phone call to be vice president of the Alumni Association on her way home from work one day, she calmly agreed to take the position and shook her hands in excitement when she hung up the phone.
Now, Potter-Murray is the youngest person at 27 years old to serve as president of the Alumni Association. She is also a high school autistic and emotional support teacher.
"It's overwhelming," Potter-Murray said of her role as president. "I feel like there is a lot of opportunity that can be made by someone who is a little younger and a little more in touch with students, what's going on with students right now and what's important to students.”
The Alumni Association, established in 1960, is a part of Alumni Relations. It is a board of the past University students who have taken on the responsibility and role of providing benefits and services for alumni, connecting alumni with one another and keeping alumni up-to-date on what is going on with Point Park. The association is made up of a board of directors, which includes the executive committee and 11 board members. Potter-Murray is part of the executive committee with Vice President Christine Demore and Secretary Jamie Inferrera.
As president, Potter-Murray wants to reconnect alumni with the University as well as establish a "larger appreciation for alumni outside of donations."
"People need to realize how important their college experience was, and that's would I would like to do," Potter-Murray said. "That doesn't mean saying, 'I want to reconnect with you so I can talk to you about giving a gift.' That's important, but it's not the most important. People can be giving of their time, their talents and their treasure.”
During her four years as president, she plans to carry out her goals by making the Alumni Association present on campus again and cultivating traditions that people can connect with year after year.
Inferrera, also a long-time friend of Potter-Murray, said she thinks she is doing a great job and has some great ideas.
"Carrie has a very energetic and bubbly personality," Inferrera said. "She's always been like a go-getter and a hard worker. I think back in college, everyone could see her as being a president of the Alumni [Association] in the future. It's just her type of personality."
Throughout her time at Point Park, Potter-Murray was involved in a multitude of organizations including the United Student Government, the Innocence Institute, Campus Life and U-View. She was also a part of WPPJ and The Globe.
She studied journalism, but eventually realized she did not want to do it anymore when she took associate professor Steve Hallock's media ethics course.
"He really got us to start talking about the business practices in journalism and the ethics involved in it," Potter-Murray said. "I found myself just getting really upset about it. I was really not OK with it. I kept getting angrier and angrier. [Journalism] wasn't as exciting and as motivating as I thought it was going to be when I was in school."
Hallock said he would like to think he did not “sour” Potter-Murray on journalism, but rather inspired her to pursue something that would be more meaningful for her.
Her career path changed after she graduated. In 2011, she attended the University of Pittsburgh to get her master's degree in special education.
Within a month of graduating from Pitt, Potter-Murray was hired by the Propel Charter School as a resource teacher.
She described her time at Propel as an "eye-opening” and “enjoyable” experience. Potter-Murray provided “every possible special education support” while at Propel. This included autistic support, emotional support, learning support and life skills. She said she also had to make her lessons and material on her own without a curriculum.
Potter-Murray left Propel when she was hired by the Seneca Valley School District this year as a high school autistic and emotional support teacher. In her position these past three months, she has dealt with students who have been suicidal and faced substance abuse problems among other challenges.
"It can be an emotionally exhausting thing, but I like seeing the progress,” Potter-Murray said. “I like hearing from parents and families that I'm making some kind of difference in their child's life. It's very heavy though."
Every morning, she wakes up at 5 a.m. and drives to work on Interstate 79. The minute she reaches Seneca Valley, she puts her bag down and immediately begins meeting and talking to students. And twice a week after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Potter-Murray works with her 25-year-old brother Ben who has autism. She and Ben work on life skills and how to be a grown-up.
"[Ben's] favorite thing in the world is Peter Pan," she said. "When we were little he used to cast my sisters and [me] in movies and musicals that I was in. In “Peter Pan”, I was Wendy and he was Peter Pan. When I told him I was getting married, he was very upset because that meant that Wendy's growing up and that he's left behind. Working with Ben is like working with Peter Pan and trying to get him out of Neverland."
When she was growing up in Shaler with her family, Potter-Murray would take care of Ben.
"I never thought of it as a job," she said. "I never thought that it could be a career that I really should think about going into. It just was like something that I do."
Potter-Murray finally decided that she wanted to be a special education teacher because she “felt moved towards that calling.”
And although Hallock thinks Potter-Murray would have made “a hell of a journalist,” he said she has a passion for education and when he talks to her about it he can see that passion showing.
Although her life has had great moments since graduating Point Park, Potter-Murray has also experienced hard times. The death of her father, a year after she graduated, deeply affected her as well her job at Propel among other challenges. She also knows as president of the Alumni Association that she will face some obstacles.
“It’s when I’m driving home on the cursed [I-79] and sitting in another round of traffic, I think about how things are syncing up. I’m the youngest president of [the Alumni Association]. I just brought my first house. I have a perfect dream special [education] job. I’m married to someone who is my best friend. I have a good family and good friends. It’s just moments like that when you feel the stars aligning for yourself.”
