DSC founder talks community, engineering, lacrosse
Morgan Elliott came up with the idea for Disability Services Club (DSC) because of an unfortunate series of injuries during her first year at SLU.
“Freshman year I came to campus with a broken ankle and was on crutches and had a really hard time getting around from class to class,” Elliott said. “I lived in Fusz and all of my classes were in the lecture halls or Ritter, the opposite side of campus. I was extremely lucky because I have a great group of friends.”
After breaking her ankle again and hearing from other students with similar issues, Elliott thought of a way that she could help people suffering injuries like hers that made it hard to get to class on time.
“I was thinking if I didn’t have that system I might have been stuck, and in a lot worse straits, especially with how much time it takes to get across campus,” Elliott said. “I decided something needed to be done.”
That something was the DSC. After getting her friends Kate Sulkowski and Lizzie Puzniak on board, she went to the Student Government Association to get the new club approved. A year later she was the president of the newly-chartered Disability Services Club.
Elliott hopes to expand her work of helping those in need by working in the industry as a biomedical engineer (BME).
“I want to… design either surgical tools or prostheses,” she said. “I really like engineering; I like math, but I also like how that applies to the bod.”
Her decision to go into biomedical engineering followed a moment of clarity when she was on vacation with her parents.
“My parents are… civil engineers. And after 18 years… of following my parents on all of my family vacations and looking at all of these old houses and… buildings, I decided I hate buildings,” she said, laughing. “I will not design a building.”
So she decided to look for a line of work that would combine her appreciation for the discipline of engineering and her interest in becoming a doctor. An interest in biomedical engineering followed naturally for her.
Part of her choice to attend SLU was the city feel of St. Louis. Elliott was born in Chayenne, Wyoming and eventually moved to Chattanooga, Tennesse.
“It’s a beautiful city,” she said of Chattanooga. “Very scenic, a lot of outdoors things, but also a lot of city things… Chattanooga’s not tiny, but it’s not St. Louis.”
Elliott counts lacrosse as one of her favorite activities, which has been the cause of multiple injuries for her.
“I actually got my thumb shattered senior year [of high school] during our rivalry game senior night. Played half a game with a shattered thumb,” she said. “Not my smartest move.”
Elliott also watches a lot of Disney movies with her friends, Mulan being her favorite.
“We all have our own Disney movie that we like, so we just end up watching them all,” she said.