This month’s Guest Blogger is Dylan J. Loucks. Dylan began his Mary Cariola career after graduating from Nazareth University. He joined our Information Technology Department in 2016 as a Help Desk Technician. In 2021 Dylan returned to school at Buffalo State University to pursue a Master’s Degree in Speech Pathology. He graduated earlier this month. He begins his ‘second act’ at Mary Cariola as a Speech Language Pathologist on June 16. Welcome Back Dylan!

Hi! I’m Dylan.

I am probably familiar to some of you, and new to others. I started out at Mary Cariola in 2016 in the IT Department. I solved many technology problems and helped set up new users and devices. While I enjoyed my time working in IT, I began to realize that I wanted to do more to directly help the students at Mary Cariola. I explored my options, and decided to return to school to pursue a career in speech-language pathology.

Luckily for me, everyone at Mary Cariola was very supportive of my decision. They even offered to help me pay my college tuition through the Grow-Our-Own scholarship program. With help from family, friends, and financial support from Mary Cariola, I have been able to spend the last 4 years studying speech-language pathology at Buffalo State University. It has been a long journey, and I have learned so much about how to help people with all kinds of different communication and swallowing disorders. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to pursue my dreams.

I will be returning to Mary Cariola next month, and I am very excited to see new and familiar faces, and to make a positive impact on the lives of the students that I will be working with.