30th Anniversary History Book

Cassandra Bergman, in the midst of applying to graduate school, was an active volunteer during her years at Beacon. For example, she spent time at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida in Orlando during Christmas week of 2016. Along with a crew of Beacon College students who are members of the Behavioral Science Organization, Bergman also sorted donations and constructed Christmas tree hangers from gift tags for Operation Shoebox, the Florida- based nonprofit that supports America’s troops with morale-boosting care packages.

“We thought it would be a great opportunity for us to give back to the soldiers who served our country,” Bergman said at the time. “We were honored to play a part in this activity.” Two years later, Bergman conducted a study of her own design that proved insightful and most likely reassuring to the Beacon faculty. She compared the stress levels of professors who teach students with learning disabilities against instructors who do not. Her research found no significant differences between the two groups. She recruited, interviewed and surveyed five participants from Beacon, plus another five from Lake-Sumter State College, which does not specifically specialize in the undergraduate preparation of students with learning issues. “Considering the school that I attend, I thought that the information that I would gather would be useful information for the professors who teach here,” Bergman said. Brown, meanwhile, has stayed busy with classes, studying and working in student housing — along with spending numerous hours behind the counter at a Fruitland Park ice cream

Dan O’Neil and Will Browning of Dell EMC interview Beacon College student Luke Hill for a summer internship position.

shop. He also twice lobbied state legislators to preserve a state-specific scholarship for private colleges as an Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida Presidential Fellow. ICUF, as the organization is known, advocates for private college education like Beacon provides. “I continually put in a lot of time,” he said. “I’m always looking for ways to do better.” His goal upon graduation at the end of the fall semester is to secure full-time employment — possibly with Dell — and help his mother, Meridith, a teacher’s aide and preschool teacher. “It’s just the two of us,” he said. “The equation has always been unbalanced. I’d like to fix that.”

A.S. Herlong building in the 1930s

Beacon students (table in foreground) participate in Operation Shoebox in 2016.

Resnick Alpern Plung (RAP) Residence Hall

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