This past May, Deloris Freeman (fondly known as DeeDee), host and founder of God’s Glamorous Girls, received her doctoral degree in Strategic Leadership (DSL) at Regent University and I am elated for her. I met her at an after Christmas Party in 2017. I was congratulating my friend Peggy Maclin, who was preparing for the last semester for her master’s degree at Loyola. DeeDee Freeman told us that she was preparing to go to Regent for an intensive week towards her doctoral degree. I asked about her field of study and she told me Strategic Leadership in the School of Business and Leadership. I told Peggy and DeeDee about my languishing credits towards my doctoral degree (that I’d started before I was my beloved dad’s primary caregiver) and why I did not want to return to the school where I started my studies. Dr. DeeDee told me “why don’t you look at Regent, you should consider Regent.”
Dr. DeeDee Freeman at the Commissioning Ceremony
A bit of the backstory, 28 years ago, when I married and moved to New Jersey I had an acceptance to start doctoral work at Seton Hall. At the time my husband pastored a church in Lakehurst, NJ and worked fulltime at IBM in NY. Within the first days of our marriage, my husband learned that a Wright/Kunjufu DMin program was about to start at United. And just like that, my husband took a buyout at IBM, enrolled as a Wright/Kunjufu fellow and I got a job. If you are wondering, yes it was a leap of faith.
Fast-forward and saving many details for another time, I earned my counseling license while in NJ. When my family moved to MD and I sought to transfer my license, I learned that MD did not reciprocate with other states. This upset me… a lot. Furthermore, in the time since I’d earned my master’s degree, state licensing proliferated and credit hours for a master’s degree increased. I admit the realization that I would have to take additional courses, to fulfill MD requirements for a license I already had, caused me to put the whole thing on a shelf. It was after my beloved mother passed and my son started kindergarten that I finally started classes to complete MD requirements for a license and earn a PhD.
Though I’ve completed the required course work for MD licensure, the extended breaks in my studies are still the pebble in my shoe. I am glad about the school change to Regent, the gap in time not so much. It has been a circuitous route.
Last fall, when I started the PhD program at Regent, I was a bit dusty. For me, distance learning happens on two tracks, the class material and the technology. The class material I get, the technology, an entirely different (read hairpulling) matter.
PhDendurance, I will get there, Y’all, keep me lifted in prayer
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