“That’s where my heart is, and that’s the work I’m most passionate about.”
Mark Morse is talking about children’s mental health.
It's a thread that runs through every chapter of his career, from working as a behavioral tech in residential adolescent care to horticulture therapy in Hawaii to supporting children who’ve experienced trauma in Oregon.
Those experiences are also what brought him to nursing.
“When I started working with families, children would be in the hospital for suicide attempts, self-harms, or overdoses, then they would come to our program for treatment,” he says. “And that was when I realized I wished I could have been in the hospital with them and actively helping them get through these tough moments.”
So, Morse came to the University of Colorado Anschutz College of Nursing, enrolling in the accelerated BSN program, a rigorous path that compresses the degree into a single year. For him, the choice was easy.
“CU Anschutz Nursing was a no-brainer because it was the most resourced, most well-connected, and most reputable school in Colorado,” he says. “When it comes to nursing, it was an easy decision to have CU Anschutz Nursing at the top of my list.”
After clinical rotations in the psych unit at UCHealth, he knew he'd found his place.
“I felt so validated by the experience,” he says. “I knew this was where I belonged.”
Creating a Positive Culture
But belonging, for Morse, isn't something that just happens. It’s something you build. As president of the student-run Legacy Fun Group, he made it his mission to shape the kind of cohort culture that makes a hard program not just survivable, but genuinely meaningful.
He organized post-exam social events, volunteer sessions at Denver's Metro Caring Food Bank, and class-wide Sunday night study groups that drew the majority of his cohort.
Those Sunday sessions became something of a legend. Morse kept them engaging, high-energy, and collaborative. And the turnout reflected it.
"It was so helpful to have the full class involved and learning from each other," he says. "You learn so much from each other, and you learn more as a group than trying to learn this information by yourself."
His philosophy on culture is both simple and surprisingly radical for a place where individual performance often takes center stage.
“Culture is essential, and it’s something that’s up to our cohort. Faculty can’t tell you what your cohort’s culture is going to be,” he says. “Having a structured team to facilitate a positive culture that stands for having a good time, volunteering, and studying together is what really matters, and we’ve done a good job at creating a culture that we want to see.”
What’s Next
After graduation, Morse plans to join UCHealth's psych floor. And he's already mapping the road beyond that. He intends to return to CU Anschutz Nursing to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP).
The goal, as it always has been, is to close the gaps.
"I think there are big gaps in mental health care,” he says. “And I personally believe we need to decide what we’ll do with our lives by where we can see and do the most good. And for me, I know that’s psych nursing.”
