Inclusion · Student Stories

Every Student Belongs: Ms Michael's Journey Through JUCo — on Wheels, and at the Top of Her Class

She discovered JUCo on its website while still a secondary school student in Tabora, and is now finishing her Diploma in Community Development with results most students only dream of. Ms Michael's story is a living proof of what a Catholic institution of higher learning is called to be — and an honest reminder of the work still ahead.

JUCo Campus News · Morogoro · July 2026 · Interview by Dr. Jacek Gorka OFM, Director of Outreach and Internationalization

When Ms Michael sat down for her final examinations this July, she was closing a chapter that began, quite simply, with a website. While still a secondary school student in Tabora, she came across Jordan University College online — and although other institutions offered the same diploma, something about JUCo made her choose Morogoro. Two academic years later, she is completing her Diploma in Community Development with a GPA of 4.8 — results that place her among the very best students of the college.

Ms Michael uses a wheelchair. She stays in Morogoro, and every morning she makes her way to lectures across a campus that was not originally designed with her in mind. Ask her how her exams went and she answers with one word, delivered with a smile: "Good."

"Would you like to continue your education at JUCo?" — "Yeah, I would love to."

A door that is open to everyone

Ms Michael's presence at JUCo is not an exception to the college's identity — it is an expression of it. As a Catholic institution of higher learning, founded by the Salvatorians and named after Fr. Francis Jordan, JUCo holds that every person carries an inviolable dignity and that education is one of the most powerful ways to honour it. Admission at JUCo has never been conditioned on how a student walks, sees, hears or speaks. Students with any form of disability are welcome — and, as Ms Michael's results show, they do not merely attend; they excel.

Her story is also a story of community. At JUCo she met a course-mate who became, in her own words, "more than a friend" — a young woman from the same programme who accompanies her daily around campus. Neither knew the other before arriving. It is in friendships like this, formed between students from every corner of Tanzania, that the college's character shows itself most clearly.

Honest about the challenges

A promotional note that hid the difficulties would not honour Ms Michael's honesty, and she was refreshingly direct. The campus infrastructure, she says, is good — "but not in all classes." Some lecture rooms still lack ramps, and her proposal to the college leadership is simple and practical: "They should put the ways for us" — accessible ramps, especially where diploma classes are taught. Her observations were taken up on the spot by Dr. Jacek Gorka OFM, Director of Outreach and Internationalization, who conducted the interview and pledged to present them to the Estate Management and the Office of the Deputy Principal for Finance and Administration.

This is precisely why the presence of students like Ms Michael matters so much to JUCo. Every stair she cannot climb tells the college exactly where to build next. An institution striving for excellence does not perfect itself in the abstract; it is perfected by listening to the very people it serves. Ms Michael is not only a beneficiary of JUCo's open door — she is one of its architects.

"Every stair she cannot climb tells the college exactly where to build next."

Not the end of the road

Ms Michael is not finished with JUCo, nor JUCo with her. She intends to return to pursue a degree in sociology, continuing her path from diploma to degree within the same community that first welcomed her. And she leaves with a commission: to be an ambassador. To reach those who stay home because they struggle to walk, to speak, to see or to hear — and who fear that higher education is not for them — her journey carries a clear message: it is.