FOLEY, Ala. — Alena McQuarter has earned a doctorate at 17, and she did not cross the commencement stage alone. Her mother, Daphne McQuarter, graduated the same day, earning the bachelor’s degree she had long put off while she helped her gifted daughter chase one academic milestone after another.
Mother and daughter graduated side by side Oct. 23 at Columbia Southern University’s commencement at the Foley Event Center. Alena received a Doctor of Education degree. Daphne earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
They were part of a Class of 2026 that numbered more than 1,300 graduates, a group that included students who traveled together from Vietnam to attend, soldiers and a firefighter. Even in that varied crowd, a 17-year-old doctoral graduate walking with her mother stood out.
‘Never put a child in a box’
Daphne McQuarter says her approach to raising Alena came down to one simple rule: Never put a child in a box.
She said she first recognized her daughter’s abilities when Alena was a toddler.
“She was 3 years old reading chapter books,” Daphne said. “And I knew, I think, at that moment, that there was a gift in her that I had to nurture.”
Nurturing that gift, she said, meant making room for it. The milestones came early. Alena was a NASA intern at 12 and was accepted to medical school at 13. Daphne said the key was learning how her daughter learns, and recognizing when to step back and let her lead.
One of those moments came at Arizona State University. Three weeks into an engineering major, Alena decided it was not for her and withdrew from the program.
“She took a W and was like, ‘I’m not doing this. They want me to build a chair,’” Daphne said. “And I just kind of smiled and said, OK. … Sometimes you have to know when to take your hands off.”
Alena switched to biomedical sciences and never looked back.
Doubters and believers
Not everyone made room for her. Alena and her mother say a principal doubted her when she was in fifth grade.
“Having someone that you look up to … tell you no, it’s kind of heartbreaking in the moment,” Alena said. “But I had the drive. So, you know, I proved it wrong.”
Daphne said that experience made her determined to show what her daughter could do. “So,” she said, “here we are.”
Other educators took a very different approach. At 13, Alena sat in the front row of a biology class at Oakwood University in Huntsville, taught by professor Marie-Claire Boutrin.
“With Alena, I felt free to actually teach without the limitations of the normal system,” Boutrin said. “Teaching is not just about conveying academic information. Teaching is mentoring.”
Nyasia Brunson, who taught Alena in sixth and seventh grade, has attended every one of her former student’s graduations since then, from high school in Texas to college in Arizona and now this ceremony in Alabama. Brunson said the determination runs in the family, and she credited Daphne’s commitment.
“I have watched the sacrifices. I have witnessed the prayers, the tears, the encouragement,” Brunson said of Daphne. “There’s nothing she won’t do.”
A mother’s turn
For years, Daphne put her own goals on hold so that her daughter could pursue hers. She told Freda Braddock, dean of Columbia Southern’s College of Education, that she and Alena hoped to graduate together.
Braddock understood that wish personally. She and her own mother earned their bachelor’s degrees at the same time.
“Daphne told me, ‘Alena and I, if we get the chance, we’re gonna graduate together,’” Braddock said. “And I said, say less. We’re gonna make it happen.”
On Oct. 23, it did.
‘Hold it open for somebody else’
Alena addressed her fellow graduates during the ceremony, and her message was about what to do with the opportunities they had earned.
“It is not enough to get through the door if you don’t hold it open for somebody else,” she said.
Daphne’s advice for any child who has been underestimated is just as direct.
“You walk in the room and own the room,” she said, “because you belong there.”
What comes next
Neither graduate is finished. Alena expects to complete a Ph.D. at Loma Linda University early next year. Loma Linda, in Southern California, is a Seventh-day Adventist university focused on health sciences, a natural fit for a student who moved from engineering into biomedical sciences. Down the road, she hopes to take part in medical missions, and her next personal goal is earning a pilot’s license.
Daphne is now pursuing a master’s degree in global education. She is also raising two grandsons, ages 11 and 8, using the same philosophy she used with Alena. One loves gaming and farming; the other loves the ocean. Every child, she said, has a unique gift.
Understanding the Doctor of Education
The Doctor of Education, commonly abbreviated Ed.D., is a terminal degree in the field of education. It is generally described as a practitioner’s doctorate, designed for people who want to apply research to real-world problems in schools, colleges, training programs and other organizations, as opposed to the Doctor of Philosophy, or Ph.D., which typically centers on producing original academic research. Ed.D. programs commonly emphasize leadership, organizational change and the improvement of teaching and learning, and usually culminate in a dissertation or applied capstone project.
Earning any doctorate at 17 is exceptionally rare. Most doctoral graduates in the United States finish their degrees well into adulthood, often after years of work experience.
About Columbia Southern University
Columbia Southern University is a private, primarily online university headquartered in Orange Beach. Founded in 1993 to serve adult learners who need to balance coursework with jobs and family responsibilities, it offers degree programs from the undergraduate level through the doctorate. Because most of its students study remotely from across the country and around the world, its annual commencement weekend in Foley is a rare chance for graduates, faculty and families to gather in person.
The Class of 2026 marked a milestone for the school, pushing its total number of alumni past 100,000. Ceremonies were held at the Foley Event Center at OWA, the entertainment and resort destination in Foley that has hosted the university’s commencement weekend.
For the McQuarters, the setting was less important than the shared moment. After years in which one of them stepped aside so the other could move ahead, mother and daughter finally walked the same stage on the same day, each with a new degree in hand.
