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Monday, March 18
The Indiana Daily Student

"Great eight" graduate from School of Education

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They call themselves the Great Eight.

They are a group of black women in the School of Education all earning Ph.D.s this spring. After coming across each other at different points in their doctoral education, they decided to carve a community out for themselves. Juhanna Rogers, one of the eight, said she didn’t think she would have made it through the program without the rest of them.

It started with sharing classes and cars. Rogers, Jasmine Haywood and Nadrea Njoku realized they would all need to commute from Indianapolis to Bloomington for classes one semester, so they decided to carpool every day.

But while they originally drove together for convenience, they soon found themselves giving each other pep talks for the day ahead, discussing how to balance their 
relationships with going to school and talking about what it felt like to be a minority group at a place like IU.

“There usually are not this many Ph.D. students graduating from a school at one time, period,” said associate professor Robin Hughes, who has taught all eight of the graduating women. “So it is incredibly significant to have eight black women graduating at once. It’s just not the norm.”

Haywood said she was driven to pursue a Ph.D. in higher education and student affairs when she realized she couldn’t find any black women in the field, particularly in Bloomington.

“When that happens, there’s this sort of subliminal message that gets into your brain,” Haywood said. “And those messages make you wonder if it’s even possible for you to get a terminal degree when no one like you has before.”

Six of the eight — Haywood, Rogers, Njoku, Demetrees Hutchins, Shannon McCullough and Johari Shuck — will earn doctoral degrees in higher education and student affairs. The other two women, Tiffany Kyser and Jada Phelps-Moultrie, will earn doctoral degrees in urban education studies.

None of their experiences have been the same, especially because they are in different doctoral programs and began them at different times, Hughes said. But they all had enough in common to come together and support each other naturally, Rogers said. They all shared at least one class together.

“When it comes to this level of education, you realize there is no choice but to support and help each other,” Haywood said. “Any gains and successes made by the other women were mine as well, and the same was true the other way around.”

Phelps-Moultrie, who came into the doctoral program as a mother to one child and finished after marrying a man in the military, having two more children and moving to the West Coast, said her experience was different from those of the others. She said the example of how their community was pursuing the same goal was encouraging.

“I wish I could have had some of the community experiences with them I missed out on, but even seeing someone who looks like you working for the same career helps so much,” Phelps-Moultrie said. “It was inspirational to me when I was working through the program.”

Phelps-Moultrie said she decided to pursue a Ph.D. after spending 13 years teaching in three different states and watching black students get marginalized over and over. She said she knew she had to leave and return to her education so she could learn how to help them.

After her graduation, Phelps-Moultrie will take a position as an assistant professor at Portland State University, where she said she wants to create a supportive community example for her students like she had at IU.

Hughes said Phelps-Moultrie’s attitude of trying to learn how to help other students is something shared by all eight women.

“They aren’t just doing this so they can be called ‘Doctor’ at the end of it,” Hughes said. “They aren’t going to sit around in the ivory tower and be cute. They know they have work to do in marginalized communities, and they are ready and excited to do it.”

Rogers said she hopes the graduation of their group of eight will set an example for other black students pursuing higher education and hold institutions accountable for creating a welcoming place for minority students.

Phelps-Moultrie also said she thinks their graduation challenges racist beliefs that black students aren’t cut out for higher education.

“We’re part of a larger narrative of African-Americans placing a high value on our education, even if we’ve been somehow displaced or have poor access to resources,” Phelps-Moultrie said. “We have a lot of tenacity, and I think it shows the African-American community is a vital aspect of the university’s narrative as well, and that’s a story that should be highlighted.”

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