First Gen Fridays Leslie Beyer Hermsen

First Gen Fridays - Leslie Beyer-Hermsen

FIRST GEN FRIDAY: Leslie Beyer-Hermsen
Assistant Dean

First Gen Friday is a monthly first-person narrative written by other first generation college students who are now fellow faculty, staff, and students at Ohio State Marion. The goal of the stories is to provide advice to other first generation college students and create a sense of belonging among the campus community.

I am the Assistant Dean of The Ohio State University at Marion. In this role, I have had the opportunity to oversee and supervise various operations including a childcare center, the Delaware Center, several campus offices, class schedule development, and the campus strategic plan. My educational journey to becoming an assistant dean has had many interesting circumstances and twists and turns.

My educational story begins in Dayton, Ohio during the 60s. In first grade we locked arms and marched across the playground shouting political chants and protests. Yes, that was first grade in the 60s. We were a diverse group of students as I lived in an integrated neighborhood. I was fortunate enough to have benefitted from having both African American and white teachers. Because of this and the diverse makeup of my classmates, I was afforded perspectives on everyday living that I might not otherwise have had.

By third grade, "White flight" resulted in my neighborhood becoming mostly African American and mandatory integration of schools went into effect. I found that my part in helping to integrate schools was being bused to a "white school." And while I had a good experience, including being Gretel in my third-grade class production of Hansel and Gretel and staying after school to learn French, in fourth grade when integration was no longer mandatory, I chose to come back to my home school. I had terrific teachers who provided me with a GREAT education with a lot of experiential learning, including ecology projects and fieldtrips to the Living Arts Center, and the Dayton Philharmonic. I memorized poems, participated in speech contests, and sang in the school choir and All-City choir. But my life was about to change in eighth grade.

During the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year my family moved from Dayton to Kettering, a suburb of Dayton. Though neither of my parents were college graduates, their expectation, and so my expectation was that I would go to college. Preparing myself for going to college became my focus. The sitcom M*A*S*H was on the air during this time, so I had my sights on being a Surgeon and for some reason thought that I needed to have calculus under my belt before going to college. When I requested to take calculus for my senior year, I was told that I could not take calculus because I was not in the advanced math track, but I continued to insist. Seeing how headstrong and determined I was, they struck up a deal with me. They said that if I took a trigonometry course in the summer between my junior and senior year and passed with a good grade, they would allow me to take calculus. So, I went to Sinclair Community College, placed into trigonometry, got an "A" in the course, brought my transcript back to my high school, and enrolled in calculus-in which I did fine, by the way.

Soon after, off to Ohio State I went to pursue pre-med without any college visits-I didn't know about college visits- and without any scholarships even though I graduated in the top 3% of a class of almost 500 students because I didn't know anything about how to get scholarships. …but I do have a football story. On move in day, my parents and I attended an Ohio State football game. I had a student season pass. My parents purchased tickets for that particular game, so our seats were not together. My seat was a wooden folding chair on the track at the 50-yard line behind the football team. It was hot that day and I didn't have any money on me. The longer the day went on the thirstier I got. To make matters worse, in front of me were racks of cups of ice water for the football team. By third quarter, I was so thirsty that I finally walked up to the players and asked if I could have a glass of water. To my great relief they shared their water with me. After the game when I mentioned this story to my parents, they told me that they knew I would do okay at Ohio State.

In my first year at Ohio State, though I received "A" s in my math and chemistry courses, I decided not to pursue pre-med. Being a first-generation college student, I didn't know where to look for guidance on how to navigate college and college choices. Had I had a bit more guidance I might have chosen to major in linguistics or something similar. Because teaching was something familiar, I changed my major to education. While pursuing my education degree, I also served as a Resident Advisor (RA) my junior year in charge of 92 first year students and in my senior year overseeing 32 first year through senior year students, providing various types of programming, advising, enforcing policies and procedures etc...

After graduating, I moved to New Hampshire with my education degree in hand to teach junior high and high school math, but realized during that year, how much I had really enjoyed being an RA. So, I decided to go back to Ohio State to pursue a master's degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. After graduating with my master's degree, I served as Freshman Advisor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio before accepting the position of Academic Advisor at Ohio State Marion. Six and half years into being an Academic Advisor, I moved into the Director of Student Affairs position, during which time I pursued and completed my PhD in Higher Education and Student Affairs, while working full-time and adopting two children-all as a single mom. A year after receiving my PhD, I became Assistant Dean.

My advice to first-generation students is to embrace your life experiences and knowledge that you are bringing to college. Seek and create opportunities. Don't be afraid to ask questions, especially in class-though, for some, this can be intimidating once you start doing this, you will experience learning at a whole different level. Take advantage of you professors' office hours-this went a long way in helping me to understand course material. Engage in extracurricular activities-you never know where those activities may lead you in your life's journey.