When Jason Matthews saw Shekeitra Lockhart on the first day of classes at Southern University in spring 2000, he recognized her as the "new girl" from his military unit. At that point, he had heard about their scheduled deployment to Iraq the next day. She hadn't.
"I stopped and spoke to her by the union at Southern and she said it was her first day and that she loved it there," he said. "I’m like, ‘She has no idea she will not be here tomorrow’ and I didn’t tell her because I didn’t dare bear the bad news. We eventually got deployed to Kuwait, Iraq and very different missions."
Now their missions are similar: They're married, and each graduated this month from Southern with doctorates in public policy.
Lockhart — now Shekeitra Matthews — graduated from high school at age 17 and went through basic and advanced training before returning home as a reserve assigned to the same company as Jason Matthews. The pair had never really talked until that first day of school.
“Once the January of the following year rolled around, we were emphatically deployed to Iraq," she said. "So I guess you could say that most of my knowing Jason came from being in the service and on active duty at that point.”
Jason Matthews said the two were split up on occasion, when missions called them to different locales, but they grew closer during their time serving overseas.
"Some missions we were separated where I didn’t see her for weeks or months at a time, and we would come back to our company being broken off into different places," he said. "We really got a chance to know each other while being in Iraq and, yeah, so that’s how that started.”
After spending eight years serving in the military, Jason Matthews worked as an officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department from 2009 to 2016.
He noted that in summer 2016 — with the Airline Highway mass shooting ambush that ultimately killed four members of law enforcement and severe flooding across the area — helped shape him as a person and led him to enrolling in a doctorate program at Southern.
"All this has somewhat coined who I’ve become through Southern University academically, and all those experiences, they’ve definitely been beneficial in moving forward in public policy," he said. "I feel that none of it was planned, the way it happened on my behalf, but it all makes sense now, and it all has significance in where I am today."
When Jason Matthews continued his educational journey at Southern, he and his wife decided to do public policy together with different focus areas.
“If people didn’t know us, they wouldn’t believe it," he said. "We took every class together, but with specific assignments; she would focus more on education and I would focus more on the criminal justice reform side of things."
Shekeitra Matthews, who serves as principal of Park Ridge Academic Magnet School in Baker, said she initially enrolled at Southern as a pre-med student but ended up taking the educational route.
The two enrolled together at Southern in 2016 and are now part of the first public policy cohort of its kind statewide.
"What’s amazing about the program that we’re in is that we’re an inaugural cohort; we’re the first cohort in the state of Louisiana to graduate with what’s called an executive Ph.D. in public policy," Jason Matthews said. "It’s the first of its kind and to be a part of the inaugural cohort, that’s gratifying as well."
The program has not been without its difficulties, the couple said, both in and out of the classroom.
In late March 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold in the United States, Jason Matthews went through an intense battle with the virus, calling himself now a "true long-hauler."
"I stayed out of work for 19 months and I now take five pills that control the rhythm of my heart daily," he said. "Even with five pills and wearing a heart monitor every other month in the program, doing presentations with heart monitors and having my heart catheter procedure, I still submitted my final exams.”
Jason Matthews said he thanks God for allowing him to live and share his successes through his COVID battle and in his educational aspirations.
"To see him recover physically and then also rise to the occasion mentally and academically has just been so gratifying," Shekeitra Matthews said.
Both agreed that their military experience helped them prepare for the difficult parts of their graduate program, which ended with their graduation Aug. 5.
"Being overseas at 18 years old and away from your family, you have to really look within to kind of overcome some of the things that you can’t control and focus on what it is you can do something about," Shekeitra Matthews said. "So that experience has definitely helped me from then all the way up until now, because being a doctoral student is not for the faint of heart. It does weigh on you mentally and it challenges you."
Because the pair worked in other fields ranging from law enforcement to education and the military before enrolling in their program, Jason Matthews said they wanted this doctoral degree to be able to better serve their community through public policy.
"This will tailor us to be better leaders and better professionals, and in the long term, we’ll be able to serve people better," Jason Matthews said. "So whether I’m serving people in the law enforcement realm or criminal justice field and she’s serving in education, it’s a benefit for everybody else more than it is for the two of us.”