Editor’s note: This feature is part of Police1’s eBook, “Elevating women in law enforcement: Strategies for professional growth and career development.” Download the eBook here.
When Felicia Rucker-Sumerlin was in her early 20s, she — and most of her family — thought her life was doomed. Born to teenage parents and raised by her widowed grandmothers, she had a son during her last year in high school and a daughter three years later and was barely getting by waiting tables.
“The prediction for me was to have a household of children, live in the projects and depend on welfare,” she says. The idea of attending college seemed too daring to even entertain.
Today, Felicia Rucker-Sumerlin looks back at a successful law enforcement career spanning three decades, in which she broke the glass ceiling several times. In 2021, she retired as Deputy Chief of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Birmingham, Alabama, the first female in the agency’s 200-year history to ever hold the position.
Along the way, she also earned a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice Administration from Columbia Southern University. “I’m proud of my degree,” she says. “It changed my life.”
For decades, the value of higher education for police and corrections officers has been a hot topic among criminal justice researchers and law enforcement brass. While some push to mandate a college education as a requirement for a law enforcement career, others argue that academic education doesn’t necessarily make an officer a better street cop. Also, at a time when many agencies are struggling to fill their ranks, requiring a degree could create another barrier to recruiting.
Current data shows about 30% of law enforcement officers have a four-year degree. Most agencies — about 80% — require only a high school diploma to be hired, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Higher education “increases the professionalism in policing” and offers career advancements, says Jeanette Loudy, a criminal justice professor at Columbia Southern University and retired master police officer with the Bristol, Virginia, Police Department.
A 2023 study confirms that a college degree can be instrumental for promotions and pay raises. That’s especially true for female officers, says Ivonne Roman, former Chief of the Newark, New Jersey, Police Department and co-founder of the 30x30 Initiative. The movement aims to increase the representation of qualified women in policing across the ranks. Currently, women make up 12% of sworn officers and 3% of police leadership in the U.S.
An advanced degree is beneficial for women looking to have a successful law enforcement career, Roman says. Many female police officers use higher education “as an equalizer to meet other credentials for career development that women don’t necessarily have.”
Prior experience in the military or assignments to specialized law enforcement units, like SWAT, are often considered major qualifiers for promotion to a leadership role in policing, says Roman, “but in all those areas, women are underrepresented.”
A college degree can deepen officers’ understanding of criminal justice and adjacent fields like criminology, forensic science, legal studies, or homeland security, says Columbia Southern professor Loudy. Working on their education also helps officers improve the practical skills necessary to perform their jobs — from refining their report writing to applying critical thinking on the streets.
Several studies have found that college-educated police officers get fewer citizen complaints and are less prone to disciplinary actions. Knowledge gained through formal education also protects officers and their agencies against costly lawsuits.
Most police academies — which run for an average of 20 weeks — don’t spend enough time covering key topics such as constitutional law and case law, says Loudy. “But it is vital for law enforcement professionals to have a comprehensive understanding of these areas” — especially aspects that are relevant for police work, like search-and-seizure laws.
Loudy, who entered law enforcement with an unfinished nursing degree and then obtained her bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in criminal justice while working on the force, says her education helped her hone her time management skills, take a more methodical approach to policing, boost her critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills.
Early in her career, Loudy says she was “quick to get triggered by the public, quick to respond verbally and sometimes, physically.” Once she got further along and started working on her education, she says she found it easier to stand back, listen, analyze, and respond calmly.
A study conducted by researchers from Michigan State University found that police officers with a college degree were less likely than their non-college-educated peers to use force as a first option to gain compliance.
When Felicia Rucker-Sumerlin, one evening in 1989 after her restaurant shift, applied for a position as a corrections officer with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, she was just looking for a change, for better pay and benefits.
The job was tough at times — she experienced bias and pushback, “not so much because I’m Black, but because I’m a woman.” But she pressed forward because she liked her work.
Leaving the jail to join the patrol division, she became the only female in a group of veteran street cops. She remembers a male sergeant telling her it was a man’s world out there, a world that wasn’t ready for females. “He was right,” she says. And answered: “Well, then it’s going to be a man’s world plus Felicia because I’m going.”
In 2008, 18 years into her career, she applied to Columbia Southern University to get her bachelor’s degree. In her department, officers with a degree get a 10% pay raise, and she didn’t want to leave money on the table. But pay wasn’t the only motivator. She’d always had a hunger for learning, a drive to push herself further.
She found psychology the most enlightening of her classes. The course helped her better understand and deal with the rising number of suspects and inmates struggling with mental health issues — “just understand why they’re doing what they’re doing,” she says. Understand — and respond more effectively.
Over her years in the sheriff’s office, Rucker-Sumerlin worked in the jail, the patrol unit, school resources, and the criminal division — including narcotics, vice, financial crimes, property crimes, and crimes against persons. And she took every training and educational opportunity available, including SWAT and hazmat courses.
“The icing on the cake” was her college degree, says the retired deputy chief. She covered all her bases so that no one could say she was unqualified when she went before the promotions board.
Her strategy worked. She climbed through the ranks, broke records and became a pioneer in her department. She was only the second Black woman promoted to lieutenant and the first to make captain, an achievement for which she received the NAACP’s “Outstanding Woman of the Year Award.” After retirement, she ran for sheriff and lost, but was the first woman to try.
Her advice to other women in law enforcement is: “Take all the training you can get. Take all the opportunities to further your education. Make yourself undeniable.”
But getting there was hard, says Rucker-Sumerlin. Even though classes at Columbia Southern are online only, she struggled to meet deadlines while balancing her home life and her work – the latter often filled with violence, death and misery. “It takes a lot of discipline.”
She particularly remembers working one night on a paper that was due the next day and being called to the scene of a murder-suicide that included two children.
“I had learned to deal with adult victims,” says Rucker-Sumerlin. “But the children, that’s a different story. You never get used to that.” She went back to the office and started working on her paper again, but the images of the slain children replayed in her head. She got a cup of coffee, took some deep breaths, sat back down, and finished her paper.
Most students at Columbia Southern University are working professionals, and many are in the military or law enforcement, with challenging schedules, shift work and time zone differences.
Faculty at Columbia Southern try to be flexible, depending on the individual’s situation, to make sure students stay on track and motivated. “I’ve been there. I can empathize,” says Loudy.
Adult learners who’ve been in the workforce for several years “tend to be more curious, ask more questions, put more effort into their work and have a deeper understanding of the course material,” she notes.
That’s why Loudy encourages her students to share what they’ve encountered in the field. “It’s not about telling war stories,” but adding some real-life experience to the course assignments.
Going forward, 30x30 co-founder Roman believes that women and higher education could become a powerful combination to shape the future of policing. Research suggests that female officers bring a calming effect to high-stress situations and are less likely to use force than their male colleagues. “They are also less likely to feel that their ego is being challenged,” says Roman.
Today, the majority of college students in the U.S. are women. “Women’s preference for education is fueling the benefits that research has seen from the increasing number of females in policing,” says Roman.
Most criminal justice experts agree that it takes both — brawn and brain — to be a fair and effective police officer. Yet women seem to have a competitive edge when it comes to being compassionate communicators, critical thinkers and able to safely de-escalate, Roman adds.
Three years into retirement, Felicia Rucker-Sumerlin thinks about getting her master’s degree in criminal justice. It’s an idea brought up by her granddaughter, who’s in college studying computer science. “So that we can graduate together,” the former deputy police chief says, smiling. “And throw our caps into the air.”
