Durand Park Opens with Touching Ceremony
Beacon College officials dedicated the Virginia and Robert Durand Garden in a ceremony Friday at the new downtown pocket park. The 12,000-square-foot park inhabits what was Palmetto Street in downtown Leesburg and is appointed with drake elms, Brodie cedars, Washington palms, Natchez crape myrtles, and various other flora.
Beacon College Continues Global Leadership on Learning Differences
On the heels of leading a successful educator’s workshop in Mumbai on learning disabilities, a six-strong Beacon College team jetted to the United Arab Emirates to run a two-week residential program for college-bound youth with learning differences. “Project Discovery” targeted individuals ages 15 to 22 with learning differences.
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Phillip Gottdenker
Phillip Gottdenker is a happy guy. The 2003 Beacon College graduate has a job he loves, a wife he loves, and a lifestyle that suits his relaxed approach to life.
Gottdenker He learned about Beacon while at boarding school.
“I loved going to Beacon,” he says. “It taugh me how to communicate, how to be more patient, and how to thrive in life. There was always someone there if you had questions about anything.”
“My main job is social media, to advertise our company,” Gottdenker says.
The company is Down Home Property Management in Oxford, Fla. Owned by his wife, Stacey, and her mother, Down Home specializes in the management of vacation and long-term rental homes in The Villages retirement community.
As the company’s manager of social media, “I do the ‘house of the week’ on Facebook, and I promote our company on all the social media websites,” Gottdenker says.
Beacon College Rates in Top 3 in Two New National Rankings
Beacon College continued its streak of landing in the top-tier of U.S. colleges and universities for educating students with disabilities as two higher-Ed evaluating services ranked Beacon No. 1 and No. 3 respectively in new polls judging schools with disability programs. Two years ago, Best Value Schools graded Beacon tops in its “20 Best Value Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities 2017-2018” ranking. In its 2019 follow-up, Best Value Schools again judged Beacon College No. 1.
Hagerty Offers Gator Grads Parting Advice at UF Ceremony
Beacon College President George J. Hagerty challenged graduates of the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions to pursue a life and career through which “your reality will be more magnificent than your dreams” during the school’s spring 2019 Graduation Recognition Ceremony.
Jacob Arlington
Jacob Arlington graduated Beacon College in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology. Yet, for someone who’d chosen a field famous for getting into people’s heads, he couldn’t diagnose his next steps after graduation.
“After graduating from Beacon, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life after college,” the 24-year-old from Jacksonville, Fla. said. “I had a summer job lined up but that was seasonal work, and he had “toyed around with joining the Peace Corps.”
Enter mom and dad. “They sent me a link talking about AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps,” he said. “I applied, was accepted, and the rest is history.”
Beacon College Commencement Salutes Record Class, Social Justice Advocates
Beacon College capped a year that began with record enrollment by celebrating the school’s largest graduating class May 4, 2019 at Lake Receptions in Mount Dora, Fla. during its 30th Commencement. The Class of 2019 boasted a long list of high-achievers. That included Sean Patrick Keenan (3.98 grade point average), Kaitlin Rose Jackson (3.96 GPA), Serena Ray Partlow (3.98 GPA), and Alejandro Javier Montes (3.94 GPA) who posted the highest grade point averages in their respective departments.
Student News
Beacon Student Helps Bloggers Find their Voices through Online Portal
For better or worse, the Internet has democratized sharing ideas and influencing hearts on a global scale at the speed of a mouse click. Zamaie Chinye craved a piece of the action. Rather, Chinye, a writer, blogger, full-time student at Beacon College in Leesburg, Fla., and owner of the creative lifestyle blog ZamaieWrites, wanted to […]
Annual Beacon College Job Fair Offers Career Leads, Networking Opportunities
Wrigley Mullen had everything she needed. Dark business suit. A folder stuffed with five resumes. Her go-getter attitude. What Mullen — a senior business technology major at Beacon College in Leesburg, Fla. — didn’t have lined up yet was … a job. She hoped to address that deficiency earlier this month at the college’s Annual Job Fair.
Staffers and Students Get Their Kicks in Annual Kickball Tussle
It’s not exactly the Hatfields vs. the McCoys, but the Beacon College Annual Staff vs. Students kickball game always leads to competition kicked up a notch. This year’s tilt, played earlier this month at the Beacon Athletic Field, proved (between nibbles of pizza) to be another hard-fought, good-spirited grudge match, with 16 staffers suiting up.
Beacon Navigators Take Field to Try to Capture the Flag (Football)
The Beacon College Flag Football Club stormed into Stetson University with high hopes of elevating the team’s fortune. Yet, while Navigators soared and elevated their individual play, Team Beacon fell short in its appearance in the American Flag Football League Inaugural Collegiate Tournament at Stetson University’s Rinker Field in DeLand, Fla.
Beacon Business Student Earns Prestigious Military Summer Internship
The Village People’s heyday was well before Glenn Popovics’ time, but just as their classic disco tune suggests, the United States Navy wanted the Beacon College junior as a new recruit. Sort of. Come May, Popovics, 21, a business management major from West Palm Beach, Fla., will serve his country and beef up his business acumen during a summer internship at the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program in Orlando.
