Reflections Magazine Issue #69 - Spring 2009 | Page 21

Feature Article

Sister Mary Beaubien,
OP ’55
Saint Dominic Award Winner
Of all of this year’s Alumni Award winners, Sister
Mary had the shortest distance to travel to get to
Siena Heights. Born just a mile or so away from
campus, the Adrian native was raised on a nearby
farm and eventually entered the Adrian Dominican Sisters congregation at the end of her junior
year of high school. She began studying home
economics at Siena Heights just after her 16th
birthday, and spent the next several summers
taking classes to work toward a degree.
And work she did.
To help pay for her tuition, she and the other
Sisters had jobs around campus. “We worked
and sometimes we forgot to go to class,” Sister
Mary said. “We didn’t participate much in campus events. We went to class and that was it. We
didn’t have all the other opportunities (of today’s
students), but we learned the same values because we learned the Adrian Dominican values.”
When she finally graduated in 1955—more than
a decade after entering Siena, she had completed
a whopping 200 credit hours. “Evidently, I got a
good education here,” Sister Mary said.
She eventually received her master’s degree and
PhD and went to teach at three different universities over the next 30 years. Nineteen of those
years were at Youngstown State University in
Ohio, where an endowed scholarship was
established in her name.
After retiring from teaching, Sister Mary focused on serving women and families around the
world. She spent four years in South Africa,
first building an elementary school library and
later developing an embroidery business that
provides women of that country with economic
independence. She is still involved with that
effort today.

However, her “other” job is working as a volunteer archivist for Siena Heights. “Most everything I know about Siena Heights I learned in
the archives,” Sister Mary said. “Sister Helen
Duggan recruited me in January 1977. We have
some stuff that’s older than me, and that’s why
I like it.”

“This university is a wonderful place to live and
work, and lots of people have been here for 30
years or more,” she said. “I never got to teach
here, so I’m grateful to be a volunteer now. I brag
about Siena all the time.” u

Though she never had an opportunity to teach
at Siena Heights, her current role gives her a
chance to participate in the campus life she never
had as a student.

“We didn’t have all the other
opportunities, . . . but we
learned the same values
because we learned the
Adrian Dominican values.”

Reflections Spring ’09

21