NyaDorsey, Author at PhD Project Stories

“Dr. Double”

As early as age sixteen in her hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, Alisha Malloy knew she wanted to get her Ph. D. She discovered her desire to teach when she taught a computer class at her high school. She attended the U.S. Naval Academy and then served as a Naval Officer, holding positions in naval…

Eleventh Hour Challenge

Professor Nicole Thorne Jenkins doesn’t just help her students write their own success stories. She then puts them to work—for her. Dr. Jenkins invested her own time, energy, and commitment into a student who was retaking the introductory accounting course after failing it with another instructor. “I encouraged her when she was discouraged. She came…

Notes in a Drawer

Dr. Ashleigh Rosette keeps the handwritten notes and e-mails stuffed into a drawer at home, and there are now many of them. Typically, they start by recounting how much the writer enjoyed taking Dr. Rosette’s class. Often, they go on to reveal that the author is now considering—or pursuing—a career in management because of Dr.…

Influences

Growing up, Gail Dawson had never considered that there might be African-Americans teaching college. It was not until she enrolled at Florida A&M as an undergraduate that she learned otherwise. There, she encountered several faculty members who would influence her life. Starting a business career and earning an MBA, she recalls, “I was always looking…

“If She Can…”

As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Kimberly Dillon Grantham admits she “had no clue what a Ph.D. was—or what I could do with it.” What she did know was that attending her favorite professor’s class ignited an unexpected spark for her. “I liked his job, and I wanted to know what I had…

Balancing

At dinnertime as a child, Maria Sanchez took it for granted that her mother and father would join her around the table virtually every evening to share the day’s experiences. Most summers, one or both parents would be off, and the family would depart for lengthy, often exciting vacations. Before long, the young girl realized…

Committee Decision

Accepted by nine universities that were bidding competitively for her, Dr. Lynette Wood put the difficult choice of which offer to accept into the hands of a committee. A family committee. “My husband and children were fully involved in my search. Some schools were very prestigious, but the family said, ‘No way,’” she recalls. Dr. Wood…

An Encounter in Church

Michael DeVaughn, a human resources executive in banking, lived in the same town where he had attended college. He belonged to the same church as one of his former professors. One August day six years after DeVaughn graduated, the professor approached him in desperation. Teaching a popular course, he unexpectedly found himself needing two more…

Balancing – and Pitching

As a doctoral student in management at Duke University, Sharron Hunter-Rainey absorbed the same pool of knowledge her classmates did. She, however, was the only one also aiming to simultaneously achieve proficiency in camping and baseball. Juggling home and career for Dr. Hunter-Rainey required some exquisite balancing, because there were three homes. Before enrolling at…

Wedding Invitation

The contrasts between corporate life and an academic career were drawn starkly in the early 2000s for former business consulting executive Miles Davis, now a dean at Shenandoah University. Watching his friends and former colleagues endure the stress of a chilly economy, he realized, “I have a multi-year contract, which I never had before. I…