Meet Madelyn Beacham
Meet Madelyn Beacham, IA ‘19
2025-12-15
McDonough, GA native Madelyn Beacham left UNG in her rear-view window in 2019, with degrees in both International Affairs and in Arabic. She currently resides in Buffalo, NY, serving as a State Department civil servant in the Passport Agency Office there.
Madelyn has always had a desire to go to new places and see new things with a sense of adventure and conviction, while also always considering what is pragmatic for her situation.
During her undergraduate career, she got the chance to spend a year in Amman, Jordan to gain fluency in Arabic, courtesy of the US Defense Department's Boren Scholarship program, and moved on to study an additional two years for her Masters in International Relations at the Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, through the Fulbright cultural exchange program. She enjoyed learning not only the language she was studying but, perhaps more importantly, the people and the cultures she experienced first-hand.
“I don't know who I would be personally without that time. I really fell in love with the Arab world, and I really want to go and live there again for an extended time one day.”
Madelyn’s decision to spend her undergraduate time studying with PSIA was not an isolated decision, as during her school years at McDonough’s Ola High School she volunteered at a refugee resettlement agency. US policy surrounding refugees became an area of interest for her, as she notes that the policy around refugees is much different from ordinary immigration, and through further research she found that international affairs would be the best available major for that, especially due to her interest in social studies.
Madelyn selected UNG as she felt that at a larger school, she wouldn’t have been able to get the individual relationships that she was able to foster with her peers and professors at UNG.
What Madelyn took from UNG was the skills and value that the professors and the institution offered her, as well as the lesson that the road to success is taken in measured steps. She also found that the campus offered her as much as it could to help her on her way there.
I feel like it's really a place where students can come in, be their full selves and really be encouraged that they can be assured that they're going to be rooted for by their fellow students definitely, but the faculty, especially.
Watch the full interview with Madelyn on our YOUTUBE channel.