When Dorothy Jean Tillman II successfully defended her dissertation and received her doctorate from Arizona State University in November 2023, she couldn't wait to share the news with her best friend.
“It was a surreal moment,” Tillman said. “The reason I was doing it in the first place was because it was crazy.”
At just 17 years old, Tillman became the youngest person to earn a doctorate in integrative behavioral health from Arizona State University for Medical Solutions before becoming eligible to vote. Earlier this month, Tillman, now 18, attended Arizona State University's commencement ceremony and spoke at the University of Health Solutions convocation as a distinguished 2024 graduate.
Leslie Manson, Arizona State University's doctoral program director in behavioral health and Tillman's doctoral chair, said Tillman has shown extraordinary perseverance, hard work and dedication for her young age. He said he was tackling all issues head-on.
“She can be a true role model,” Manson said.
Ms. Tillman, known as DJ by her family and friends, was an early bloomer. She grew up in Chicago and she was homeschooled from an early age. She received her education first in a group setting through online classes and then by her mother, Jimalita Tillman, a single parent with a background in community theater.
Tillman was in a gifted program before transitioning to homeschooling. Jimalita Tillman continued to accelerate her daughter's growth. By the time she was eight years old, she was taking high school classes. While most 9-year-olds were learning math and reading, Tillman started college online.
At the time, they lived with Jimalita Tillman's mother, Dorothy Wright-Tillman, a civil rights activist who worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was a Chicago alderman. Ms. Tillman is her grandmother's namesake (hence the II at the end of Ms. Tillman's name).
During her early years in college, Tillman's classrooms were often at Chicago's Starbucks, and her days began as soon as the store opened, she said. Her standard order was iced peach green tea and lemonade.
“By the time the kids went to lunch, we'd close the computers,” Tillman said, crediting her grandmother for giving her discipline and focus.
Because of her age, Tillman lived at home while pursuing higher education, and most of her classes were held online. This was a challenge for the self-proclaimed social butterfly. “I love meeting new people and talking to people and understanding them and how their brains work,” she said. She found another way to stay connected with her friends through her after-school activities.
At age 10, she earned an associate's degree in psychology from Lake County College in Illinois. She earned her bachelor's degree in humanities at New York's Excelsior College at age 12 and her master's degree at Unity College in Maine at age 14. She chose these fields because they help scientists “understand why people treat the environment the way they do,” she said in a July 2020 interview with Time for Kids. Ta.
Ellen Winer, a psychology professor at Boston University and author of “Gifted Children: Myth and Reality,” said kids like Tillman have a motivational strength she calls “mastery rage.”
“One of the reasons they push themselves is because they have a high, kind of innate ability, so whatever talents they're given, learning comes easily to them, and they have a lot of fun doing it,” she said. Schools are often ill-equipped for such gifted kids, she added, which can lead to parents homeschooling their children. The cost, she and some experts say, is a loss of socialization and learning with peers.
“There's no perfect solution for these kids,” Weiner said.
Jimalita Tillman said she believes her daughter is done with higher education after earning her master's degree. Ms. Tillman had just started an organization called the Dorothy Genius STEAM Leadership Institute, which supports black youth in Chicago interested in STEM and the arts. It was 2020, right after the pandemic started.
When her daughter announced that she wanted to get a Ph.D., she was surprised and once tried to dissuade Tillman. But Tillman wanted to help young people with their mental health. She told her mother to trust her.
“I had no choice but to follow her lead,” said Jimalita Tillman, 42.
Ms. Tillman has been accepted into the Management Concentration at Arizona State University for Health Solutions, an online doctoral degree program. Her dissertation on developing a program to reduce stigma among college students seeking mental health services is based on research she conducted for an in-person internship at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Tillman hopes her story will resonate with talkative, outgoing, “quirky types of girls who are trying to figure themselves out but are really smart.”
“I want people to see that energy, that spark, that excitement, packaged in a classy, beautiful way,” she said.
Although Tillman earned her Ph.D., she still remembers the joys of her teenage years, such as attending prom. On Saturday, I will go to his graduation party as his best friend's date. The two plan to ride in an Escalade with stars on the ceiling. This is a feature she requested and her mother made possible.
Ms. Tillman is concentrating on her academic and professional endeavors and plans to once again host the institute's summer camp. Then, she said, she plans to take some time off and have a “fun teenage summer,” doing what she loves, finding new hobbies, and finding herself in the process.
“I want to focus on who I am,” she said.