From graduating Bluffton to teaching and once again being a student during the COVID-19 pandemic, Leslie Beasley has had a variety of experiences in educational settings.
Beasley is a hall director in Neufeld while also working with the diversity, equity and inclusion committee.
During her undergraduate experience, Beasley was a resident assistant for two years and a hall director in Bren-Dell her senior year. Also during her years as undergraduate, Beasley was a member of Multicultural Student Organization, MSO.
With all of these experiences, Beasley was offered a position after graduating with a special education degree and licensure in 2020. During this time, the COVID-19 pandemic was more rampant than before, and Beasley found it to be a learning experience.
“I realized I didn’t want to teach in a traditional classroom, and I wanted to specifically work with underrepresented students,” Beasley said. “It was honestly like an answer to a prayer when this GA position opened up. This is the perfect area for that because I am working with underrepresented students.”
In the position Beasley currently holds as the advisor for MSO, she works with students like international student and senior criminal justice major Flor Avilez, president of MSO.
“It’s nice to be able to work with someone who has been in our spots before on this campus,” Avilez said. “She can relate to us more than other faculty can. It’s very nice.”
Headshot of Leslie Beasley. Photo taken by Elizabeth Rockwell.
After growing up in a religious household, Beasley did not participate in Campus Ministries during her time at Bluffton, but Beasley spoke at chapel Thursday, Oct. 21. This had been something that she had never pictured herself doing before although she had been active in spiritual life separate from Bluffton.
Eventually Beasley wants to use the experiences she is gaining now to work with more students with disabilities. She compared herself to being the “Jacqui Slinger” to another school because she valued all of the work Slinger has done at the university.
This eventual goal is something that is exciting for Beasley to utilize her degree to its full potential, but she finds her experiences now to be just as valuable even though she isn’t using her degree in the traditional sense.
“That was a stepping stone for something,” Beasley said. “Those few years were for something. You learn something out of it. Just use that in your next position. It seems like a useless degree now, but you might learn some skills in that position that may be useful for the future.”
