“So many people at Cleary were instrumental in my success. I wish I could thank every single one.”
Yolanda Stinson, special duty chaplain for the office of the Chief of Police with the Detroit Police Department for the past eight years, kept pushing back her educational plans until she heard about the opportunity at Cleary.
“Going back to school had been my goal for many years,” but Yolandas’s husband died when their only child was just 2 years old and the young mother’s focus took a drastic turn. “I made the decision to dedicate the next 16 years of my life to raising my daughter, and when she graduated from high school I would return to college,” Yolanda reports. “I kept reminding myself I would go back.” She did not want to give up her dream of a college degree.
While raising her daughter, Yolanda became a licensed minister and started working in family biblical counseling. She was able to manage this position while not missing any of her daughter’s competitive cheer events, track activities, school plays and countless extracurriculars.
And then the pandemic hit, and Yolanda faced another demand on her already overflowing work life schedule. She had to keep her daughter focused and encouraged while she took online classes the last year and half of high school.
After her daughter successfully completed all of her classes and graduated, Yolanda began working for the Detroit Police Department (DPD) as a Faith-based Coordinator and Housing Resource/Homicide Family Support Specialist. Within the first year, she started serving the community as a support specialist with the police department’s homicide unit.
Her education remained “a very real goal that I knew was attainable,” she continued to tell herself. While working in the department, Yolanda learned about Cleary’s accelerated degree program. As a full-time employee of the DPD, she was eligible for this benefit.
“I looked at the curriculum, the availability of classes and how they would fit with my schedule, the affordability and flexibility of the program, and thought to myself, ‘I can do this,’” so Yolanda enrolled in Cleary’s bachelor’s degree program. She not only completed her bachelor’s degree and the Emerging Leaders certification program, but she continued on to earn her master’s degree and the Graduate Leadership Award at Cleary’s 2025 commencement ceremonies.
“It was so exciting and humbling to receive this award,” she reflects. “God bless the DPD for hiring me to do such worthwhile work, and Cleary University for offering this opportunity to complete two degrees in such a short time. It was the best decision for me.
“I valued every one of the instructors I had,” she points out. “My advisor, Mr. Bacon (Ryan Bacon, Student Success and Outreach manager) listens and really hears students. He was humanistically empathetic, and this goes a long way for adult learners like me who are trying to work full-time, be there for my daughter, and study. I appreciated all the staff.
“Starting back was the hardest part,” Yolanda says when looking back over the last three years of her education. “If you are on the fence about returning to school, you will be thanking yourself in the end that you did it, and you can celebrate your victory! You are not alone in this journey,” she adds. “Cleary provides plenty of support – academically and financially.”
Yolanda feels that with her BBA and her MBA degrees more doors will open for her in the business and leadership arena. “And someday, I would love to teach at Cleary!” she announces.
And her daughter? “She was happy for me. She saw my hard work; multi-tasking work, school, home and ministry; and I believe it has encouraged her to pursue her own educational and entrepreneurial endeavors.”
