Where Are They Now: Ashley (Senss) Joyce, MMS ‘20

After graduating from St. Joseph’s University in 2013 with a degree in biology, Ashley (Senss) Joyce, MMS ‘20, took a job as a professional stage manager for a theater company. A longtime lover of the theater, it took an entire year for Joyce to realize that although she loved her job, the lifestyle just wasn’t for her.

So, she returned to her hometown of Havertown, Pennsylvania, and took a job as a medical assistant at a dermatology office. That’s when she started applying for physician assistant (PA) schools.

“There were two PAs at the practice where I was working and with what was going on in my life and my age at the time, it seemed like the right path to getting where I wanted to be in medicine,” said Joyce.

After interviewing with the Physician Assistant (PA) Studies program at Salus University, she was immediately convinced that was where she was meant to be.

“They made the place feel like a family and a home,” said Joyce. “It felt like I was almost already going there.”

Part of her time at Salus fell during the pandemic, but that didn’t prevent her from working hard and becoming the valedictorian of her class. The difference for her, though, was how the PA program prepared her for the real world and to be successful.

“The biggest thing was how Salus stressed understanding the ‘why’ behind things. It wasn’t just memorization just to get through exams. They really wanted to make sure we understood the reasoning behind why things work the way they worked,” said Joyce. "That set us up for having a good handle on things because if you don’t understand that, you’re really behind.”

After graduating from Salus, she secured a job in at Delaware Valley Dermatology, a specialty practice in Wilmington, Delaware, where she still works. For the first six months of that job, she was able to shadow and work with a collaborating physician. After that, she was seeing patients on her own, which she believes helped to build on what she had learned at Salus.

“It can be difficult because a lot of specialty practices want someone who can easily hit the ground running and don’t need extra training,” said Joyce. “But luckily having worked as a medical assistant in dermatology prior to going to PA school kind of gave me a little bit of a leg up.”

For now, Joyce would like to continue to work in dermatology and hasn’t yet considered her plans for the future. She wants to continue to see patients and learn as much as she can about that specific area.

In addition to being the valedictorian, her time as Salus was marked in an even more personal way when her husband, Connor Joyce, proposed to her on the Elkins Park, Pennsylvania campus with the gazebo and pond in the background on graduation day.

Joyce is still involved in community theater on the side, as stage manager for two or three productions a year for the Players Club of Swarthmore group. Otherwise, she hangs out with her husband and new puppy, a miniature Schnauzer named Evie. And, the couple is expecting their first child in October 2023.