Editor's Note: This is the eleventh in a series of profiles of winter 2023 graduates.
In 2026, Shalaya Mallory will retire from the U.S. Navy, where she is involved in quality assurance, audits and inspections. When her military service ends, she is ready to launch a new career in criminal justice
Mallory, a single mother who enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) while deployed in Japan, is among the more than 8,400 graduates who received diplomas this month. In her case, she is celebrating the completion of two degrees at the same time: an associate degree and a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice.
After graduating from high school, Mallory enrolled as a full-time student at Bowie State University, a historically Black university in Maryland, on a band scholarship. She played piccolo and flute. While at the university, a military recruiter talked to her about joining the Navy—and Mallory switched gears.
“I decided to do that. I got out of the school mindset and thought about traveling the world,” she said. When she was sent with the Navy to Japan, it was 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Restricted in what she could do and mindful that she was nearly halfway through her military service, she thought about jump-starting her academic journey again. She went to the college office on base and discovered that she could transfer her Bowie State credits to UMGC.
Mallory, the single mother of an 11-year-old girl, said that earning a bachelor’s degree underpinned her plan for a future after the military. But taking courses, working full-time for the military, living overseas and raising a child was no cake walk.
“It was a lot to take on. I had friends who helped me and my leadership supported me so I was able to work and do school full-time,” she said. “My child’s father is in the military, stationed on a ship in Japan, so he was involved, too.
“I think people are hesitant to start classes because they don’t know where to begin,” she added. “But they need to understand that they will have support at UMGC.”
Mallory admits that she was intimidated by the prospect of returning to college 16 years after graduating from high school, but she said the required Program and Career Exploration (PACE) course prepared her for what to expect.
“Then I dove in and got my first two classes knocked out,” she said, “and that allowed me to keep going.”
Mallory was especially engaged in her classes focused on juvenile delinquency, drugs and crime, and victimology, which examines the relationship between injured parties and perpetrators of those injuries. She said victimology not only fascinated her on an intellectual level, but it helped her understand “some of the stuff I dealt with in my childhood.”
Now stateside again, living in Virginia on a new assignment with the Navy, Mallory is thinking in more detail how she will use her new academic credentials.
“I was thinking about doing something with Homeland Security or in education, maybe eventually becoming a professor and teaching criminal justice,” she said. “I’m looking into getting a master’s degree while I’m still in the military.”
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