John Gonsler had a chance to speak to a class this past week about his journey to Morningside University. He was a correctional officer for 6 months before becoming a professor. He explained further his time working there with numerous stories. 

On the first week of the job, an inmate would approach John with weird questions. Following he expressed a little chuckle saying, “I look and find drugs in his suitcase. A leader of a gang then came up to me and says, that guy won’t be bothering you anymore”. According to John the inmates face was messed up. 

He continued with his humour describing an inmate with pet birds. He explained how the inmates were complaining about the water being gross. When he checked it out, “ Im looking at the hot pot and sure enough there are three dead birds boiling in the hot pot. It was fucking funny”. He soon found out that job wasn’t for him. 

“I didn’t even start thinking about being a professor until 2011” he stated numerous times. After many jobs leading him to the professor occupation, he wounded up teaching at Flint CC and in Indiana before coming to Morningside University. 

Morningside was just starting a criminal justice program which is only one of the things that interested him. ““You get the summer off.I really like teaching the intro class. Having that tangible experience of a student saying “i enjoyed this” interests me.” 

Now with Professor Gonsler at Morningside University, he was asked what he hopes students get out of his class, “Expose them to the good and bad of all these positions, so they know what path to take”. 

He now is in his 3rd semester at Morningside University building a hopefully successful criminal justice program.