This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Joshua Young.  He was born in Voorhees but grew up in Glassboro, New Jersey.  While he was growing up, his father was an administrator and teacher at a private Christian school called Faith Christian Academy in Glassboro.  Josh’s mother worked at the same school, helping out at the front desk, sometimes teaching, and so on.  She did this while also helping to raise Josh and his two younger sisters.  After some medical issues when Josh was in middle school, she stopped working at the school.  Josh and his sisters attended Faith Christian Academy.  Josh graduated from the high school in 1997.  He then enrolled at Gloucester County College (now Rowan College of South Jersey), finishing his associate’s degree in the Spring of 1999.  He transferred to Rowan University that Fall.  Three years later, he graduated from Rowan University with a degree in history.  While an undergraduate, he met a fellow Rowan student who owned his own construction company called Perfect 10 Flooring.  He offered Josh a job, and Josh worked there for over a year.  In 2003, he decided to go to Biblical Theological Seminary (a Reformed seminary now called Missio Seminary) in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.  After one year at the seminary, he took a job teaching middle school history and middle school Bible at Penn Christian Academy in Norristown, Pennsylvania.  Josh got married during this time to a Taiwanese woman he had met at seminary named Li-yun.  After three years, he left Penn Christian to focus on finishing his seminary degree, which he did in 2008.  He then enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary, pursuing a master’s degree in theology, with a focus on church history (ThM).  After completing this degree in 2009, he taught at a small Jewish school for one year.  In 2010, his son, Luke, was born.  That same year, he received an offer to teach history and literature at the Wilberforce School, a private school that ranges from pre-kindergarten to 12^th grade.  In 2011, just as he was starting at Wilberforce, his daughter, Joelle, was born.  Josh has been at Wilberforce ever since, and his title is Dean of the Upper School Boys and a teacher in the humanities.

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I always loved history, and, from an early time, I thought I would want to teach history.  I am sure that the decision to go to Gloucester County College was strictly financial.  It was affordable and allowed me to commute.  I don’t think I considered any other college.  Likewise, the decision to go to Rowan University was surely about the costs.  I could walk from my house.  However, in my last year and a half, I decided that I wanted to live on campus.  This increased my expenses a little bit, but my financial aid was very helpful and allowed me to live in one of the apartments on campus. I ended up only having to borrow a total of around $8,000.  I know that tuition went up rapidly after I graduated. 

I remember having Historical Methods with you, Dr. Carrigan.  It was a challenging course.  You held your students to high standards, but I learned so much.  I can remember learning about things like historiography, which were completely new concepts.  I also took Civil War and Reconstruction with you.  I remember your passion for the subject, especially when we got to Reconstruction.  I loved how you gave so much sympathy to the characters involved and helped us understand the missed opportunities of the era.  It was, frankly, inspiring.  I very much appreciate everything you did for me while I was an undergraduate (and even after as well). 

Another thing that I remember about this class was that my father, Harry Young, took the course as well.  It was a strange experience to take a class with your father, especially as he usually scored just a bit higher than me on papers and exams.  Still, I actually quite enjoyed sharing the experience with him.  My father had dropped out of college when he was a young man, and he decided that he would go back to school at the same time as me.  He finished his history degree at Rowan, then completed a master’s degree at Rutgers Camden, and finally finished his doctorate at the University of Memphis.  Today, he is an adjunct faculty teaching history at Rowan University. 

I took Age of Revolutions with David Applebaum.  It was in the middle of the morning, but he decided that it would be better if we had the class in the Student Center where we could get coffee and eat while talking.  We did this for two or three weeks before someone came and told him that he could not hold class in the Student Center.  Dr. Applebaum was very personable.  He was quirky and smart, and we had a hard, but enjoyable, time trying to keep up with him.  It was a different style of learning in his class.  I remember my friends and I trying to figure out how to take notes and being flummoxed.  Later, I realized what he was doing and appreciated it more. 

I had Dr. Kress for World War II.  His course took place on Tuesday morning, and I was in that class when we found out about 9/11.  I think someone came in and told us what was happening.  I remember that one student asked to leave to call his family because his father worked at the World Trade Center.  He left to find a payphone.  I know that I enjoyed the class in general, but that memory is still strong all these years later.

I took Ancient Mediterranean World with Scott Morschauser.  I believe that I had this class the day after 9/11.  On that day, he abandoned his normal lecture plan and simply wanted to make sure that we were ok.  He demonstrated to me on this day, and in many others, how one could be both an intellectual and a spiritual person.  Just like you, he had great passion for his subject matter, which always came out when he was lecturing. 

I am thankful that Rowan required us to take courses outside of United States and European history.  I probably would have not taken classes in these other parts of the world without the requirement, but they really opened my eyes to the wider world.  I took three or maybe even four courses with Cory Blake.  This was right after 9/11, and it was fascinating to study the Middle East and Islam with her at this time.  

I also took a course with Jim Heinzen on Stalin, which was absolutely fascinating.  I knew Stalin as an evil figure in history, but the course really helped me understand how and why so many people came to support him. I can still remember Dr. Heinzen assigning us a letter (in translation of course) from someone that Stalin had thrown in prison. It was fascinating to see the “cult of personality” in this letter.  I had never really understood this concept until I had this class and read that letter.  I can still remember the paper that wrote for that class. It was on the American perspective on the Soviet purges in the early 1930s, particularly the ones that targeted military leaders. 

I took a really interesting class with Joy Wiltenburg in which we wrote historical fiction.  I remember how many of my fellow classmates wrote about Roman soldiers because Gladiator had just come out.  I remember learning that writing historical fiction required much research as well.  You could not write it without a firm grounding in historical sources and an understanding of the times in which you were writing.  I wrote a story about a widow finding letters from her husband about the Battle of Chancellorsville.  I remember Dr. Wiltenburg pushing me to research the fauna of the area in which the battle took place.

I joined the Rowan Christian Fellowship for all three years.  We ate together, we worshiped together, and we did Bible study together.  We also volunteered for various activities in order to be a blessing to our neighbors.  We solicited requests from members of the community, and we then pulled them out of a hat to determine which neighbor we would help.  One of the most memorable of these drawings was when pulled out a request to clean a fraternity house.  I am not sure that we were excited about this opportunity, but we happily complied with what had been dealt to us.  There had been a party the night before.  There was a lot of debris, and I remember one individual passed out, and he did not wake up even as we used a shop vac near him.  We had a good time even doing this work, and we also played intramural basketball, volleyball, and soccer.  I made lifelong friends.

My time at Rowan was formative.  It was not only great to learn all the content that was shared with me in my courses, it was really important for me to see all the different approaches to teaching that existed, to meet so many different types of people, and to learn about the world beyond.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_all/