Star Profile
Janelle Beamer of Southern Wesleyan University
By John Temple Ligon Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Janelle Beamer

Janelle Beamer is a public relations professional. Beamer maintains and enhances the public's impressions of Christian- based Southern Wesleyan University, which is headquartered in Central, S.C. SWU also has campuses in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and North Augusta, where the branch campuses teach mostly business management at the upper levels.

Dr. and Mrs. Beamer, moved to Columbia in 1959. Beamer's father, Dr. Bob Beamer, earned his PhD in pharmacy at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. Her mother Joan was an elementary school music teacher. Dr. Beamer recently retired after teaching at the USC School of Pharmacy for 48 years.

Beamer attended kindergarten at St. Andrews Presbyterian where she started learning piano and clarinet and took dance cGlraoswsiensg. O Sldheer also wrote , at age four.

Beamer attended grammar school at Seven Oaks Elementary School for a year, and attended New York City's PS- 217 on Roosevelt Island for the 1977- '78 school year.

Beamer's father worked that year at Cornell Medical Institute

Beamer finished Irmo Middle School and went on to Irmo High School where she was a member of the wind ensemble. Beamer also worked on the school paper, The Stinger, for three years, and was the editor her senior year.

Beamer entered USC and planned to major in journalism. She took writing jobs on the side during her four years of formal education.

Beamer worked as a stringer, and free- lanced at The Irmo Independent NewsThe Dispatch- News, and The

Lexington Chronicle. Beamer had a regular job with the big- time insurance firm, Marsh & McLennan, at their Columbia office in the AT&T Building.

Beamer's membership at Columbia's Washington Street Methodist Church is a lifetime connection. Even though she lives in Liberty, S.C., she keeps her membership at Washington Street.

Beamer sang in Carnegie Hall in 1990 with the church's choir.

After graduating from college, Beamer went right

to work as the editor of The

McCormack Messenger, in McCormack, S.C. She transferred

from The Messenger

to Greenwood's Index Journal

as the copy editor.

While living in McCormack, Beamer taught classes at Greenwood's Piedmont Tech. She shifted to more time at Piedmont Tech as communications coordina- tor, and continued writing for The Index Journal while teaching classes.

Beamer took courses in management science at Southern Wesleyan University on top of all her other career activities in and around Greenwood. She graduated from SWU with a master's of science in management, and went to work for SWU as their director of public relations.

Beamer moved into her house in Liberty, S.C., conveniently located between SWU's headquarters Central campus and Greenville's shopping and entertainment districts.

In Greenville, Beamer is partial to Restaurant O on Main Street and to High Cotton on the Reedy River. The Peace Center for the Performing Arts is always good, and Cafe and Then Some, a street-savvy comedy troupe, is always on the mark.

Beamer is still a few years shy of 40, but she's been calling her own shots for so long now, there's always the speculation over what she'll be running next.