Growing up in a working-class military family, Dr. Shawna Patterson-Stephens tended to move around quite a bit as a youngster. She lived in California, Florida and overseas in Turkey before settling down in Detroit where she skipped her junior year of high school and graduated valedictorian of her class.
“I remember asking my mom as a kid, if she had put some money into savings for me to go to college, and she looked at me with indignance,” says Patterson-Stephens with a chuckle. “She said, ‘Girl, no. What are you talking about?’”
Thinking that she would follow in the footsteps of other family members, Patterson-Stephens was poised to join the military until her godmother disrupted those plans and insisted that she pursue a four-year college education. 
Dr. Shawna Patterson-Stephens
“She was very instrumental in my final decision-making because I was going to go into the Navy,” remembers Patterson-Stephens.
Now, with her sights set on attending a university, the question was which one, and how much money would they offer Patterson-Stephens so that she could attend?
“I remember riding the bus home from work one day and I saw someone with the Central Michigan University bumper sticker, and so I applied because I recognized the bumper sticker,” says Patterson-Stephens, who graduated in 2003 from CMU with a degree in sociology.
