The Beacon wishes Dr. Andrea Breemer Frantz good luck

Our editorial boards are always about a significant issue in the world or on campus, and this week is no different. For almost a decade, The Beacon has been led by Dr. Andrea Breemer Frantz, who is known to students and faculty alike as Andrea. She has been the one constant element of this paper.

Andrea will be leaving Wilkes to follow her family west, and take a position at another university in Pittsburgh. She leaves behind an amazing legacy and incredibly huge shoes to fill.

Every year, The Beacon is reborn with new students, but Andrea has always been there to give us her guidance and point us in the right direction. We would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge the major contributions she has made to The Beacon over the past decade.

Andrea came to Wilkes University in the late 1990s with her family from Iowa. She often jokes that she left a beautiful scenic Midwestern town, where the pelicans would fly against the sunset, to South Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre, where her daughter found a syringe in their front yard.

Since that time, the area has improved and she has become an institution throughout the Wyoming Valley. She first worked alongside Mr. Tom Bigler, a local media legend. She began teaching courses at Wilkes with Bigler when his sight began to deteriorate. Eventually, she took over his courses when he retired.

Andrea was then told that she would be taking over The Beacon as advisor a year later.

Since that time, Andrea has taken The Beacon from a newspaper struggling to survive to a nationally recognized, award winning newspaper.

During her time at Wilkes, Andrea has also served as a tireless advocate for the First Amendment on campus. She took her mass communication law class’s final project and turned it into one of the most successful First Amendment Weeks in the country.

However, Andrea is probably best known for her rapport with her students. She has always been known as a person that can find the best in everyone, and is always willing to help.

In an interview with The Medium, the communication studies department newsletter, Andrea talked about how much she will miss her students at Wilkes University.

“They are far and away the most wonderful students I have ever worked with. I have loved my students at Wilkes. They are often this great mix of raw talent and naiveté, and they come in like that. You get to watch them morph over four years into these fabulous people who are going to go off and do important things, and it is a privilege to be a small part of that over the four years. That’s the hardest thing to leave. I don’t know if it is magic that happens here, but I think it’s unusual to be able to develop the types of relationships that we do here at Wilkes. I don’t know if that happens anywhere else. In fact, I am pretty sure that it doesn’t. That’s hard to leave,” she said.

Andrea has always made it a point to not mention herself in The Beacon, but her contributions to Wilkes and The Beacon are hard to ignore.

The entire staff of The Beacon would like to thank Andrea, and wish her and her family the best of luck in their future endeavors. You will always have a place here at Wilkes, Andrea.