Alum Credits MCC for Rewarding Experiences

While facing adversity in his personal life, Middlesex Community College helped Dennis Murphy, of Cambridgeport, jumpstart his career. With the support of MCC programs and employees, Murphy found a passion for research in international relations and security. Going on to share his expertise at top institutions, he now serves as a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

“My experience at Middlesex was quite a good one,” Murphy said. “I got involved with many different experiences at MCC – like the Commonwealth Honors Program (CHP) – and I found that the more I knocked on doors, the more the doors just opened. MCC gave me the opportunity to engage with people to try to do some good when I was struggling.”

Murphy is now pursuing a PhD through Georgia Institute of Technology, among other schools. He also serves as a researcher on teams with the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab, Frontier Security Institute, and the RAND Corporation. Also at Harvard University in a predoctoral research fellowship program, he researches international technology with a focus on United States-China technology and artificial intelligence (AI) competition. He cites his experience at MCC as what got him started in his career.

“I’ve been doing a lot of things in a lot of different places, meeting a lot of great people,” Murphy said. “Because of MCC, I knew how to be engaged, I knew how to be part of extracurriculars, and I was more prepared. MCC was very good to me.”

Prior to his PhD, Murphy also attended American University and earned a Bachelor of Arts in International/Global Studies with a focus on United States foreign policy in the Middle East and East Asia. He interned with Michelle Obama's Better Make Room campaign to gain career experience. He also studied abroad at Peking University in China, where he researched foreign policy from a new perspective.

Murphy went on to attend Johns Hopkins University to pursue a master’s degree in strategic studies with a focus on international economics. Through his studies, he pursued Chinese politics and foreign policy at Tsinghua University in China. He was able to work with faculty members who had experience in senior-level government positions, giving him a real-world look at what he was studying.

At MCC, Murphy set a goal to attend every class he could after missing many of his high school classes due to illness. By working hard and building strong connections with faculty, he pursued a variety of coursework that inspired him to major in liberal arts with a concentration in global affairs. He credits his world history professor Alejandro Raya for encouraging him to push himself and join the CHP, which helped him become more involved in the MCC community.

“I wanted to prove to myself that I could go to school every day, which is something that for other people probably doesn't seem like a big deal, but for me it was,” Murphy said. “I'm meeting all these people, and I started to get more involved. Professor Raya was a very good early influence on me, and he supported me a lot.”

Murphy achieved his goals of taking as many classes as possible and earning a 4.0 Grade-Point Average (GPA). When two close family members passed away, he wanted to be more present in the MCC community and gain support from his peers to keep him on track. This led him to become a Commonwealth Honors Ambassador and join the Student Government Association (SGA) and Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society.

By connecting with peers and faculty members, he received many new opportunities. In addition to being a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship, he received an Honors Scholarship Award and many letters of recommendation from MCC faculty. Murphy found his time at MCC valuable because it laid the foundation for his career when he was unsure of his next steps.

“I threw myself into my work, and I tried finding things that were more meaningful,” Murphy said. “I went from someone who had no financial means at all to go to college to having a scholarship that paid for the lion’s share of my undergraduate tuition. Even though these years were tragic, MCC made it rewarding.”