Alumna RoseMarie Beatty is lead donor for the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center Scholarship Fund
Donor RoseMarie Beatty, BA ’92 (public relations), is one dedicated Duck. Both her home and office in the San Francisco Bay Area, are full of UO memorabilia, including a 60-pound statue of our beloved mascot—a product that wasn’t available until she contacted the company Stone Mascots and convinced them to add the duck to their catalog.
“I’m very much a UO fan,” says Beatty, director of human resources at Donor Network West, a nonprofit that matches donated organs and tissue with the patients who need them.
“The university is an amazing place,” she adds. “It’s a beautiful campus, and I have such fond memories there. I chose the UO. That was the first big life choice I made, and I’m incredibly proud of that decision. It was the start of the roadmap of my life.”
Beatty hopes her recent gift to the university will help UO students create their own roadmaps to success. As the lead donor for the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center Scholarship Fund, she also encourages other alumni and friends to join her in the effort.
The new fund will create 16 scholarships ranging from $750 to $5,000. Recipients will be chosen by a scholarship committee convened by the coordinator of the center. Criteria for the scholarships include financial need, services to the UO Black community, and the pursuit of a minor in Black studies or Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic studies.
“I want to help others have the same great UO experience that I had,” Beatty says. “I was turning 50, I don’t have children, and that got me thinking ‘What am I going to do with my 25 cents when I die? What causes do I care about?’ Then I thought ‘Why wait until I’m dead? Yes, I can do some estate planning, but I can also make a difference right now.’ That was exciting to me.”
Beatty has fond memories of her college years: meeting lifelong friends, the smell of fresh-baked bread wafting into the residence halls from the Williams Bakery (located at what is now the site of the Ford Alumni Center), Black Student Union dances, and pledging with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.—and the rain.
“It rained a lot,” Beatty recalls. “So we just studied. It’s raining again and there’s nothing to do, let’s hit the books! I made great friends, people from all across the country I’m still in touch with today.”
As great as it was, Beatty also had to adjust as a Black woman from California’s diverse Bay Area moving to a university with a very small Black population. Assumptions were made about who she was, such as the time when a woman asked how it felt to be a first-generation college student, when in fact both Beatty’s aunt and grandmother, who are also named Rosemarie, have master’s degrees. Once a student from a small town told her she was the first Black person she’d met.
“They didn’t say it in a mean way,” Beatty says. “I was glad they could be vulnerable in that way and share that. But it was surprising. I could go days on campus without seeing anyone who looked like me. That’s why it’s so important to have a place to go and feel comfortable, where you can connect with people who look the same, where it feels familiar.
“I had friends of all different races, but it was nice when I was homesick to go to this little room in the EMU for the Black Student Union. It was a place where you didn’t have to be the representative voice for Black students or deal with other peoples’ stereotypes or issues. I could look across the room and see a version of myself.”
But it was just a room, Beatty adds. In 2018 during the inaugural Black Alumni Reunion, she was excited to attend the groundbreaking of the new center on 15th Avenue, and hopes it gives Black students a home on campus that is both beautiful and functional as well as welcoming.
“I’m so proud that the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center is now part of our UO campus,” Beatty says. “It’s a matter of being acknowledged as important. It’s a great place for students to go and feel comfortable. And it’s also a way to highlight Black culture and everything that Black students contribute.”
Now that we have the center on campus, she’s quick to add, it’s important for donors and alumni to support scholarships and ongoing programming.
“I was lucky,” Beatty says. “I received scholarships as well as significant financial support from my mother and grandmother which allowed me to graduate without any student loans, so the money I earned working in the EMU Fishbowl and at Carson Hall was my spending cash. But I had friends who were not so lucky. As alumni, we should help open the doors for students.”
—Story by Ed Dorsch, BA '94, MA '99.
February 16, 2021