Recruiting students from across the U.S., Campus is the new alternative to online community college. Our online associate degree in business program consists of 100% live, online classes taught by professors who also teach at top-ranked colleges and universities. Read on to learn more about our talented teaching team.
Meet Dr. Amy Murphy. In addition to teaching in the Campus online associate degree in business program, she has been teaching at Syracuse University in the Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition Department since Fall 2019.
Before Syracuse, she taught literature and writing at Green Mountain College, San Antonio College, and Antonian College Prep High School. She has also been a professor at Texas A&M-Kingsville and Oklahoma State University.
Dr. Murphy studied at the University of Arizona and the University of Florida, where she got her Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. in English. She loves writing about the culture of 19th-century Britain and is even currently working on several writing projects.
With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Murphy is an expert at helping students improve their writing skills. She loves seeing students grow more confident in their writing and thinking potential as they prepare for their futures.
Why Campus?
As an educator, Dr. Murphy has shared her knowledge with students in a variety of classrooms – high schools, universities, and even community colleges.
Before moving to the East Coast, she taught in a large community college system in San Antonio, Texas, and became really passionate about the work that she did with students there. She felt that two-year schools were the perfect environment for her.
“I was excited when I heard from Campus and they were looking for professors,” Dr. Murphy shared. “I love teaching at Syracuse, but I also have always really loved the setting of the community college and working with folks who are attending as freshmen and sophomores. It seemed like a really good fit for me.”
When we asked Dr. Murphy what sparked her interest in teaching in our online associate degree in business program, she also highlighted her admiration for Campus’s overall design.
“I'm passionate about the model because I was already a really avid supporter and promoter of community college learning,” Dr. Murphy stated.
“I really believe that it makes a lot of sense because it is economically accessible to people. Community college environments [also] attract really strong teachers that are very dedicated to student support,” Dr. Murphy continued. “And so I feel like all of it is sort of fitting together in a nice way. As it grows, it's going to get better and better.”
In terms of online learning, Dr. Murphy told us that while many traditional educators believe there is no way you can get the same experience from online teaching, she disagreed.
“I actually think that some classes will function even more effectively online than they would in a face-to-face setting,” Dr. Murphy shared.
However, the biggest positive that comes with online learning for her is the increased accessibility for students.
“[Online learning] is just a tremendous thing that I feel like is going to lead to just much more access to higher education,” Dr. Murphy said. “And I think that it's wonderful that Campus is doing that. From the online learning to the low tuition, that affordability and access are going to give people opportunities they just wouldn't have otherwise.”
Professor Fun Fact: Dr. Murphy is also a loving chicken owner. “I'm an avid poultry lover, and I've had many flocks of chickens,” she shared with us. “I loved keeping chickens. It's so fun to watch them just hang out in the yard and do their chicken things.”
Proof That Reading Can Make You Stronger
For Dr. Murphy, the journey to becoming an educator was not a predetermined path, but a calling she discovered during the later years of her undergraduate program. Her passion for English emerged from a deeply rooted love for storytelling that can be traced back to their family.
“My mom was a librarian,” she told Campus. “She was also really inspiring to me because she went back to school when we all were kids and finished her degree, which was a really hard thing for a mom of three to do at the time. And because she loved to read, she always had tons of books in the house.”
Surprisingly, when Dr. Murphy was young, she was also a bit of a late reader.
“I was one of those kids in the first grade. A teacher said to my mom, ‘We don't think she's reading at grade level,’ and that was a key moment for me as a kid and for my folks as parents.”
Her teachers recommended that her parents start reading to her every night to strengthen her reading skills, and they did. Not only did they read to her, but they also created fond memories for her to look back on as she explored storytelling and writing.
One of the cool things Dr. Murphy pointed out to us was that her mother encouraged her to read any book in the house that she wanted to, even if she was too young to read them.
“That kind of sparked my curiosity,” Dr. Murphy reflected. “I think that was one of the key things that made me interested in what I do today – becoming a teacher and teaching literature and writing in particular.”
Continuing, Dr. Murphy indicated that while she now knows that she was a weak reader when she was younger, it’s not something that she remembers being teased about. Instead, she told us that she simply knows that it was a part of her story.
“I think the thing that we think of sometimes as being a deficit is the thing that is just it will change everything,” Dr. Murphy noted.
“It depends on how we as people connect to those deficits. I see it all the time with my writers who – if they've had a bad writing experience – sometimes will say, ‘I'm scared about this,’ or ‘ My last teacher told me I wasn't a good writer,’ and I hate to hear that as a professor. I think that's one of the profoundly most damaging things you can say to somebody.”
Dr. Murphy believes that everyone is a writer. For her, teaching is all about helping students find the confidence to write and guiding them as they find their own writing voices.
”And that's something I hope that I can give students in my classes.”
Embracing New Cultures
Dr. Murphy has become more and more interested in her own writing pursuits outside of the classroom.
Though she has a background in poetry, her biggest project is writing her own work of fiction. In fact, as of writing this blog piece, she is currently in Prague, taking part in a month-long writing workshop, and we can’t wait to hear more about it!
“I'm afraid to call it anything yet because I don't want to jinx it, but it's a, you know, it's a longer process that I'm working on,” Dr. Murphy shared. “We'll see what happens.”
Beyond her writing endeavors, Dr. Murphy is also taking the time to study the French language. She shared with us that, as an instructor at Syracuse, she’s able to take a class as a faculty member.
What piqued her interest?
“I'd really like to get back into French because my husband is Canadian and my daughters go to school in Montreal,” she answered. “And so I thought I should really start studying French again.”
The Smart Way to Launch Your College Career
The Campus online associate degree in business program helps students knock out the first two years of college and supports them as they prepare for life after graduation.
Want to attend classes led by mission-driven educators like Dr. Amy Murphy? Apply now to be part of the next trailblazing cohort of the Campus program today.
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