HEA Alumni Spotlight

Katie Beck '20 helps high school students find their way

By Charles Scott

Katie Beck is a bookworm, transitional education specialist, adjunct professor of history and published author. She is also a proud Higher Education Administration alumna who graduated in 2020.

From her pre-pandemic fully online experience with the HEA program, to her time working with the University of Maryland on a military base in Kaiserslautern, Germany, to publishing an article on military veterans in the NYU Journal of Students Affairs, Beck has seen learning from multiple angles.

We asked  her a few questions about her time with the HEA program and the work she’s done since graduating. Beck enjoys traveling with her husband, watching movies, and reading. She’ll be starting her PhD in Higher Education in August at West Virginia University.

Can you briefly talk about your time with the HEA program? How did it prepare you for your current position?

I completed the HEA program completely online, which was a first for me.  I had only taken a handful of online classes before signing up for the HEA program, so it was a new experience for me.  I really enjoyed my time in the HEA program and found it very rewarding.  In that the program was online and asynchronous, it prepared me for the current state of higher education due to COVID-19.  I became much more familiar with virtual programs such as Blackboard, Zoom, and others and was able to easily transfer to online working when we were all sent home in March of 2020.

You had a piece about the retention of veteran students published in an NYU journal. Can you talk more about that research?

My research focused on the transitional challenges that veterans face when they make the decision to take college classes.  I taught student veterans specifically for three years and saw many of these challenges firsthand: PTSD in the classroom, gaps in enrollment due to military orders, and the lack of veteran-centric services on campus.  My article sheds light on some of these issues and offers possible solutions to increase the success and retention of student veterans.

What was it like working on your degree from a military base?

There were both positives and negatives to working on my degree from a military base.  One of the positives was having the student demographic I planned on focusing on right at my fingertips.  I interacted with student veterans everyday both as a teacher but also within my personal life.  It allowed me to see first-hand the challenges veterans face while taking classes.  One of the negatives was the difference in time zone as there was a six hour difference between New York and where I was living in Germany.  It made real-time study sessions and Zoom meetings a little more challenging.

How was your experience as an adjunct professor?

My experience as an adjunct professor has been amazing considering I’ve been lucky enough to teach in this capacity all over the world.  My time as an adjunct with the University of Maryland Global Campus was probably the best three years of my teaching career given the opportunities, I had to teach history where a lot of it happened.  In my capacity at UMGC, I was able to take my students on weekend trips to locations that we spoke about in class.  I was also able to lead a field study to Normandy for three days with nineteen students to study the D-Day Landings firsthand.  I’ve truly had an amazing career in this respect.

Tell us about your position at Pierpont Community and Technical College: How has the pandemic affected the needs of the high school students you work with, and how are you able to help them?

I serve as the Transitional Education Specialist at Pierpont C&TC, which covers both the entire Dual Enrollment program and our CTE pathway program known as EDGE.  I am the liaison between all of the high schools in our district and Pierpont, serving as a point of contact for hundreds of high school students and their counselors in terms of dual enrollment.  My job is essentially to assist in closing the gap between graduating high school and attaining a college degree, whether it be two- or four-year programs, by promoting dual credit courses that studies have proven will increase the number of high school students who transition into college.  

How do you see your role shifting once we’ve returned to what we hope will be relative post-pandemic normalcy?

I see my role being much less virtual and more hands on, which I am looking forward to.  As of right now, I’m not allowed to visit the high schools I work with, so everything I do with my dual enrollment students is virtual.  I am really looking forward to life returning to us reaching that post-pandemic sense of normalcy, so that I can start working with my students in person.  I believe it will really benefit my students to actually see me and get to speak to me in person rather than everything being virtual.