The final three years of high school were completed in Parkersburg, West Virginia at Parkersburg High School Home of the Big Reds and the Big Red Band. Rachel was 17 when she graduated and decided to attend the local community college for her first fall semester. It was during this first year following high school and introduction into college work that Rachel discovered a technical school located in Atlanta, Georgia. Bauder Fashion College (now part of Kaplan) that offered courses in Interior Design, Fashion Design & Merchandising, and Modeling/Professionalism. She attended a full year of courses in Atlanta and left with a 3.5+GPA. The education and experience in the technical programs encouraged her to pursue a higher degree which leads her to apply at the University of Charleston, Carleton Varney School of Art & Design for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Interior Design.
While attending the University of Charleston, Rachel worked at the Koenig Art Emporium at the Charleston Town Center Mall. Art Emporium Website Her university experience at UC culminated by completing her internship at Dorothy Draper, Inc. in New York City with Mr. Carleton Varney! Upon receiving her degree she obtained employment with Contemporary Galleries of West Virginia, Inc. as a junior designer. Contemporary Galleries is most known as the Herman Miller dealership in West Virginia and parts of the surrounding states. Contemporary Galleries Website Rachel enjoyed the diverse challenges of systems design and working for a company that provided full services for their client's projects.
The career path has been a successful 20-year journey from junior designer to senior designer and as an independent contractor offering a wide range of design services to project managers and clients. Over the years Rachel enjoyed the opportunities to work on a wide variety of design projects: systems furniture in offices to healthcare design, hospitality, education, government, industrial, museum and even stage design. The culmination of work was the five years invested in the renovation of the West Virginia State Museum. The museum opened in 2009.
While in Charleston, she met her future husband and once married moved to Morgantown, WV. In 2008, Bob and Rachel became the parents of twin boys. Rachel's husband is a public servant, the Honorable Robert "Bob" Beach who has held office in the WV State Legislature's House of Delegates (2000-2008) and elected to the WV State Senate from 2010 to the present. 
Needless to say, she became very busy supporting her husband, raising boys, and continuing to enjoy working in design. Rachel received a faculty appointment in 2010 by Pierpont Community & Technical College, School of Human Services to be the Instructor for the Interior Design courses within the Applied Design Program. In 2016, she is now an Assistant Professor of Applied Design and the Program Coordinator for Interior Design and Design Specialist. In 2018 Rachel became the Program Coordinator for the Applied Design Program at Pierpont Community & Technical College. In 2020 she was elected President of the West Virginia Affiliate of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. Rachel is also pursuing her graduate degree at
West Virginia University in the College of Education and Human Services.
This is where her professional path became a double-lane highway.
My Teaching Design Manifesto:
My narrative for design, technology, and education:
Design has been a driving passion my entire adult life stemming from a love of art, composition, and visual aesthetics. I graduated from the University of Charleston in the early 1990s. This was a tremendous time of transition and growth for technology and its effects on design. My age and life experiences define me as a pilgrim in this present digital age. My area of focus has been commercial interior design. My interior design background combines 25 years’ experience with my strengths in the design process, programming drawings, and documentation. I witnessed the proven organic element of change take place because of new technologies happening before my very eyes. This included the changes in communication, organization of data, accessibility, and how we applied technology to our documentation of data; from pencils and vellum, blueprint machines, early plotters, and AutoCAD to interactive BIM drawings and video walkthroughs.
Technology forced itself into my life. I have learned to embrace it and want to help others benefit from the great communication and organization tools technology can provide in education. I began teaching in higher education by taking a faculty position in the Applied Design Program at Pierpont Community & Technical College’s School of Human Services in 2010. It has been an exciting challenge to find creative ways to expand opportunities for students to access course content information in my field of expertise. The last four between 2014-2018 have fast-tracked my program curriculum to adapt to industry expectations of 21st c. design graduates. As the Program Coordinator since 2011, it has been my responsibility to keep my curriculum relevant and facilitate its digital content in our LMS (Blackboard). I have enjoyed the design system approach to standardizing my courses for our participating faculty in the LMS and building course sites in Google. Beginning in 2011, I have participated in Quality Matters workshops, presented at the east coast 2016 QM Conference at Berkeley in NYC with my Program Director, lobbied for strengthening our Digital Literacy in the college’s General Education competencies, as well as presenting at state and local conferences on Digital Literacy.
Needless to say, I have discovered that I thoroughly enjoy instructional design as much as the other areas of visual design that I study, practice, and apply. Originally I was going to complete my graduate studies in Design with a focus on Sensory Design but needed more flexibility in course scheduling. The online courses in the Instruction Design & Technology Program fit my criteria perfectly. My primary objective for seeking to further my education in instructional design will be met through research and design thinking to develop solutions in the design process of framing digital content that serves the desired specifications of each project.
SNAPSHOT VIEW OF RESUME
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