A Child in Speech Therapy Inspires a Mom to Earn Her Degree

When Deanna Timpe receives her diploma in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Allied Health Sciences (CAHS) during spring graduation, she will be the second graduate in her family this year. Her ten-year old son, Ethan, graduated from speech therapy in February. Ethan is a major reason why Timpe decided to become a UC student almost a decade after graduating from high school.

Instead of going to college immediately following her graduation from Lakota East High School in 2002, Timpe jumped right into motherhood. Her husband, Jeff, enlisted in the Army and moved their young family to Texas. While he did tours of duty in Iraq, Timpe worked in the cosmetology industry for 10 years, both in Texas and when the family moved back to the Cincinnati area.

In 2011, the desire to be home with her children led her to cut back on her hours working as a hair stylist and got her thinking about college. "I was scared to go to college," she says. "I don't know why, because looking at it in hindsight, I've been in college now for four years with four kids, and I was scared to go when I just had one."

With some encouragement from her husband, Timpe enrolled at UC Blue Ash, studying secondary education, planning to become a high school teacher. After one quarter of classes, she decided to take her studies in a different direction.

"I always had a draw to the medical field for some reason," she says. "When I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a nurse." When her son Ethan started going to speech therapy at the age of two, it reignited her interest in the health care world.

"I think that made me realize speech language pathology was an option for me," Timpe says. "I realized that this is language-based, it's scientific-based, it's working with other people, it presented so many options."

Once she started looking into it, she realized to get where she wanted to be, she would need a master's degree. Once again, her husband was behind her all the way, encouraging her to continue her education which she did when she transferred to UC's main campus.

Being a full time college student and a mother of four children between the ages of two and 13 has been challenging for Timpe. Traditional students frequently ask her how she does it and she says, "I don't know. Every day is so different, and I have had to develop as a person and understand that I can handle things."

The biggest step for her, she says, was compartmentalizing her time. Being a mother and a student is like having two different jobs, she says, so when it's time to study, that's what she does and relies on her husband and other relatives who live close by to help take care of her children.

"How do I do it?" she says. "Not by myself that's for sure."

Timpe's perseverance has been noticed by other students and the staff in the college. She did her senior honors capstone research with Lesley Raisor-Becker, PhD, adjunct assistant professor in CAHS.

"Deanna is an amazing student who is fully invested in being successful," says Raisor-Becker. "She serves as a role model for her peers and often leads group assignment work. I am so happy that I have been able to work with her as her instructor and research mentor."

Now that she has completed her bachelor of science degree in communication sciences and disorders, she will continue her education at UC this fall as a graduate student, studying speech language pathology. Besides getting her degrees, she is hoping that she serves as an example to her kids.

Before she enrolled at UC, her kids would talk about working as a hair stylist when they grew up or joining the Army. "I think that now that they see how much I value an education and how much I value going to college, how that's really changed things for me and been a big deal for me, now the kids are talking about how they want to be a doctor, or want to be a nurse," she says. "I wanted my kids to know that going to college is important and it is a good idea. Just don't wait to do it until you're old like me."