MTP 14: Rachelle Beckner, on identity and faith in career transitions and teaching communication skills to engineers.

Rachelle is a full-time Lecturer of Communications in the Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University. She also operates a marketing and fundraising consulting boutique -- Beckner Creative. Rachelle shares her journey from a career in nonprofit work to becoming an educator. She shares her experiences of grappling with career transitions, offering valuable insights and triumphs she encountered along the way. At Clemson University she teaches communication skills to civil engineering students. You’ll be encouraged by Rachelle’s authenticity as she reflects on personal growth and spiritual development.

Connect with her by email: rlbeckn@clemson.edu

and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachellebeckner/

and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachellebeckner/

Watch Meet The Prof on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@MeetTheProfOfficial/videos

Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-the-prof-with-shane-and-spence/id1733311320

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6kizp6klascdMj1nqaj6LD

Find over 500 Christian Professors on MeetTheProf.com:
https://meettheprof.com/

Get free resources for answering questions about God at:
https://www.everystudent.com/

College students, follow us on Instagram and send us a question(s) for Christian professors by DM here:
https://www.instagram.com/meettheprofofficial/

If you’d like to financially support our Faculty Commons ministry, you can do so online at give.cru.org/0424344.

Chapters

• 0:00 Chapter 1. Introduction and Side Hustle (00:24 - 04:21)
• 4:21 Chapter 2. Navigating Life Transitions (04:21 - 09:13)
• 9:13 Chapter 3. Identity, Faith, and Growth (09:13 - 16:45)
• 16:45 Chapter 4: Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Transcript

Shane (00:24)
Well, Rachelle, this is going to be so much fun. I have really been looking forward to this time. Spence and I've been saying we're really looking forward to meeting you and talking to you. How are you doing today?

Rachelle Beckner (00:35)
I'm great. I'm great. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you all.

Shane (00:38)
Yeah. Great. Well, so I'm always interested to hear about a faculty member who has a business on the side, like a side hustle, I would call it. So I was wondering if you could tell us some about your business before we start talking about your professor life.

Rachelle Beckner (00:56)
Sure. And I would definitely say, yeah, this is my side hustle. And it was a transition tool, I guess, for me when I was as I was leaving my nonprofit.

I love

helping people and that's what I was doing through nonprofit work. So plus it was like, this is all I know. These are the only skills that I have. And so I just kind of created this small company to do some freelance work and help nonprofits back in West Virginia where I was formerly living and here in our community here in Clemson and do some marketing, do, you know.

Spence Hackney (01:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rachelle Beckner (01:40)
My husband and I are both former journalists, so writing's a pretty good skill that we have. So just writing, copy, and whatever. It was just a way to kind of, okay, how can I bring money in while I'm trying to figure out what is going on here? What's next for me? Because I was scared and didn't know what was next or what God had. And I mean, I had no idea that I was gonna end up here where I am now. So yeah, that's...

Spence Hackney (01:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rachelle Beckner (02:10)
That was my, okay, here's my way of holding on with my fingernails to this career that I had.

Spence Hackney (02:12)
Yeah.

Hey, I had an entrepreneurship professor one time that said all the best businesses are started out of

Tell us kind of the circumstances that went around that. And I'm really interested to see like how you dealt with it and how God intervened or kind of how you saw your faith in that too.

Rachelle Beckner (02:37)
Yeah, so I was actually here at Clemson and doing development work here at Clemson, and which we had moved here for this job. Like we left everything we knew in West Virginia. My husband's career was ending. We uprooted our family thinking this was like, God was laying out this path for us. And

Spence Hackney (02:43)
Okay.

Oh, I-

Rachelle Beckner (03:03)
this is where we were supposed to be. And it was, you know, it was a lot. It was a, took a lot of faith to, and it was a huge transition for the girls. We have two daughters. And so we just kind of thought like, probably naively, like this is gonna just be this, you know, golden road of like God's bringing us here. So everything's gonna work out great. And it was, it was a lot.

Spence Hackney (03:10)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Rachelle Beckner (03:32)
It was a lot of hard work and I was on the road a

And at the time, my health was also just plummeting, like the stress of it all the things that I was going through in the office, and there,

Spence Hackney (03:40)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (03:46)
there were physical things going on that I was like, I feel like I'm going crazy right now. I have no idea what is happening with my body.

Spence Hackney (03:47)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (03:54)
I got really depressed at that time. And so it was kinda, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, like we,

Spence Hackney (03:54)
Hmm.

Mm.

Rachelle Beckner (04:00)
I questioned, wait, you brought us here. So like, I uprooted my whole family and trusted that this was what we were supposed to do. And now, you know, now where are we? Now what are we gonna do? And

Spence Hackney (04:04)
Mmm.

Rachelle Beckner (04:15)
I had to stop learning

or stop leaning on myself. I had, that's one of my biggest sins is to not be a burden to God. And I'll just take care of this for myself and I'll fix this so other people have more problems and you can work on somebody else's problems instead of mine. And yeah, I had to stop doing all that. So, and then like out of nowhere, it was like, hey, do you wanna teach this class? And I'm like,

Spence Hackney (04:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Shane (04:32)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Spence Hackney (04:40)
Yeah.

Man.

Rachelle Beckner (04:47)
I sure, I never really ever dreamt of being a professor. And, but I have communication background and I love it. And that's part of what I'm passionate about. So I was like, okay. And I, I mean, I had, my heart was just like bursting with joy that semester. And I couldn't, I was just like, I can't believe how much I'm enjoying this or like, and that I'm connecting to these students. And

Shane (05:11)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (05:18)
The first time a student came up to me after class and she said, you're my favorite professor. I like, I took everything in me to not start crying in front of her. And I was like, oh, thank you so much. And like ran to the stairway so I could just start crying and just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that she, somebody said this to me. And so yeah, when I was like, I think. Yeah.

Spence Hackney (05:19)
Wow.

Shane (05:32)
Hmm.

I'm gonna start crying.

Many students have no idea.

Rachelle Beckner (05:47)
And I was like, I think this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And yeah, but it still took three more years of just a class here and there. And before God opened up this door completely for

Spence Hackney (05:47)
Yeah.

just appreciate you so much just sharing that with us cause it's so real and it's so true. Everybody deals with it.

You mentioned in there a kind of a universal problem that I think most of us experience and that is kind of letting your identity become your work.

or your work become your identity, excuse me. And Tim Keller says it like this, I read a quote from him recently that said, the danger making it your identity is that if you're successful in your work, it goes to your head, or if you're not successful, you're emotionally tanked. And so it sounds like what you're describing is that emotionally tanked, I entered some depressive state, everything's terrible, right? And the solution to that is to find your identity in Christ again.

Right, to let him inform who you are. Like, how did you go about doing that? Because I think so many college students lose their identity in college. They let somebody else tell them who they are, if that makes sense. Tell me what your experience was like in regaining your identity in

Rachelle Beckner (06:59)
I became a Christian really kind of later in life, like right before we got married. So I didn't grow up with all of this and my husband did. And so we kind of have, you know, that

Spence Hackney (07:04)
Mmm.

Rachelle Beckner (07:13)
I guess a little unevenly yoked with that. He's got this whole history and he knows all the Bible verses and I didn't. And so that year I joined a women's Bible study.

it was Tuesday nights and we would meet for two, two and a half hours. And we, you had to read, you know, like so many chapters a week. And so we would study different books of the Bible. I

Spence Hackney (07:38)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (07:43)
I just learned so much and saw God's character. And, oh, sorry, I'm gonna get choked up.

It just, that's really where I would say my relationship with Christ really strengthened. And I saw more of him and his character and wanted to be more of that.

Spence Hackney (08:01)
Hmm

Rachelle Beckner (08:09)
Yeah, and it was funny because it also like strengthened my marriage. My husband, he was reading this book, shoot.

Spence Hackney (08:09)
Yeah.

Rachelle Beckner (08:19)
I forget what it was something about... It had Lion and Honey in the title. And I was like, hey, is that about Samson? And he was, he just like started, he's like, oh my gosh, do you know how exciting it is to me that you really know who this is and what this is about? And so just being able to have, yeah, just being able to have more conversations like that.

Spence Hackney (08:34)
That's awesome.

Rachelle Beckner (08:42)
I'm so passionate about this age group because I know from both of our lives what happens when you don't have a relationship with Christ and you're not following and you just lose so

Shane (08:49)
Mm.

Rachelle Beckner (08:55)
I have had one student,

they was amazing too, and she's our TA now.

Last year, she was in my public speaking class and she gave her testimony as her first intro speech. And I was just like, oh my gosh, like how brave are you to share this in your group of your

Spence Hackney (09:12)
Yeah.

Shane (09:13)
So Rachelle, you teach communication skills to civil engineering students. What kind of skills do they need?

Rachelle Beckner (09:23)
The idea of talking to people is scary for a lot of them. And

like God calls us to work with people. And a lot of them are math oriented and they're kind of usually introverted.

Yeah, so when we, I mean, I focus on all the like, here's how you give a good speech and all the public speaking, you know, eye contact and volume and all those things.

Shane (09:40)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (09:51)
not doing your verbal fillers, your ums and your uhs, but it's more about how can you connect to your audience no matter who that audience is.

The good comments that I sometimes received is I learned how to talk to my team better. I learned that I felt more confident talking to people. I can look somebody in the eye now when I'm talking to them.

Shane (10:13)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (10:21)
And the engineers and the firms will tell me this, look, I can teach them how to do the calculations or do the work that we do the way we do it at our firm.

all day long, I can't teach them how to be confident, how to talk to the client, how to, like, they've got to work on these skills and it's important what you're doing.

Spence Hackney (10:41)
Yeah.

I can't help but think of the story of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. How like Tesla was arguably the better scientist better technology, but he just couldn't deal with people. You know, like he just couldn't communicate his ideas. And today we all use Edison's stuff because of it.

Rachelle Beckner (10:59)
They think they're going to go into an office in a little cubicle and sit and do their calculations and never have to interact with anybody. And it's like, that's the furthest from the truth. You're going to work everything you do is going to be on a team. And so you have got to learn how to be on a team and work through these issues.

Spence Hackney (11:09)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (11:20)
So we

make them do some surveys, some assessments, like personality assessments on, like we were talking earlier, the Briggs, Myers- Briggs, and this one's called Disc, and so like, I'm a D, I'm a dominant character trait. I like to take charge and

Shane (11:28)
Hmm.

Spence Hackney (11:36)
Yeah.

Shane (11:40)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (11:42)
So they have to know which of those they are and how does that meaning transfer into how do you communicate? How do you work? What's your work style? What's your communication style? And then how does that interact with these other traits?

Every strength can also be a weakness when you're overusing it. And I tend to overuse a bit. So that was a learning area for me. Like, oh, okay. This is how I'm coming across.

Shane (12:04)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (12:14)
even when I, so intention doesn't always equal impact. I've done a lot of leadership programs and trainings like back in West Virginia, I did leadership West Virginia and different, so we had different speakers like that come in and I have some people in my life that do life coaching and leadership training coaching. And so they always, yeah.

Spence Hackney (12:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shane (12:34)
So Rachelle, do you have any success stories? You don't have to name names, but do you have any students that come to mind like this person really made some progress in communication? they got it, they took some steps of faith, any kind of success stories like that?

Rachelle Beckner (12:51)
yes, little, I always have like, at least one, I would say little gem in every semester that I'm like, okay, I know they didn't, a lot of them didn't like me or they didn't like having to do this, but like, here's where the needle has moved and so even though this has been a difficult, you know, path to follow, you're having an impact, so keep going. Um.

Shane (13:17)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (13:18)
And we had a student and he's, I mean, he's still a student, but he was in the sophomore class and he was just, his anxiety level, oh, is, I mean, and I suffer from anxiety, so I can relate to these students on that too. But it was like way off the charts and I couldn't see where he's really doing any coping mechanisms or

like really doing anything to try and help himself. So he was like petrified to speak and he had a stutter. And so we talked at the beginning of the semester about the stutter and I said, thank you for telling me. I'm not going to penalize you for that. And let's just work through it. And I mean, I can't even, like he was so scared to speak at the beginning of the semester.

Spence Hackney (14:11)
Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (14:11)
And at the end, like you could see the confidence in him, all the professors could at the end of the semester. And like that, you know, I got just choked up, like just, I don't even know that he saw how much he grew and he can speak confidently now and he's a senior now. And he, I think he gained enough confidence too that his stutter became less. And that's something also that I was then...

Shane (14:21)
Wow.

That's amazing.

Rachelle Beckner (14:40)
God showed me, okay, like this is something I need to incorporate and teach the students. Like, everybody has different abilities or kind of disabilities that might, you know, hinder them up here. And we, part of communication is we, the audience, have to be attentive listeners.

That means giving your full attention to the person who's speaking. That means being patient and listening and waiting if somebody does have a stutter and waiting for them to complete their sentence and not try to finish it for them. And so it was also, I guess, one of those moments where God showed me like, here's another way that you can kind of teach communication and help build compassion and relationships with people by

Spence Hackney (15:12)
Hmm.

Shane (15:26)
Yeah.

Rachelle Beckner (15:27)
understanding being on the receiving end, not just the delivery.

Spence Hackney (15:32)
meta story from what you've talked about is how our spiritual walk is a process, not a moment. You know, it's we start over here and we're really wrecked. We get a little better. We get set back two feet, then we come forward and you're still on that walk. Like it never, it never

Rachelle Beckner (15:49)
I think also on that, we all have to get from behind these devices and which I tell them all the time, please put your phone away, get off of social media. None of that is real. Again, connect because the more connected we are and you're actually spending time with people, that fights depression.

Shane (15:56)
Hmm.

Spence Hackney (15:56)
Oh, yeah.

Hmm.

Rachelle Beckner (16:17)
That helps you to understand everybody is developing. You can see other people are on their own walk. And that's why I guess I try to share my failures, my weaknesses, be transparent because I feel like they need to see that this is real life. This is what people, we all, people say, oh, I thought you had it all together. No, no, I am so far from having it all together. No, no.

Spence Hackney (16:17)
Yeah...

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Shane (16:45)
Well, Rachelle, if you could go back and give yourself advice as an 18 year old, um, how would you advise yourself?

Rachelle Beckner (16:55)
Ooh, that's a good question.

I think a lot of times part of that depression, anxiety is that voice in our own head and beating ourselves up. And so stop listening to that voice and listen to the voice of God and who God is telling me that I am.

And too, you know, I am on a journey and try to enjoy the journey and not focus on I have to reach these achievements because this is what success looks like because that's what society says it looks like. So stop measuring myself against societal standards and focus on, you know, what does God have for me? What does that success look like?

Spence Hackney (17:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shane (17:41)
Wow. Well, Rochelle, we have a final question that's very heavy on our hearts.

Rachelle Beckner (17:47)
Okay.

Shane (17:48)
Which do you choose, beach or mountains?

Rachelle Beckner (17:51)
Oh, that's such a hard question. I love both, but I am a beach girl. I need the sunshine and the sand. And that's my, I mean, I grew up in the mountains, but I moved south because I want the beach.

Shane (18:04)
Nice.

Nice.

you have a favorite beach?

Rachelle Beckner (18:12)
We, yeah, I mean, just because we've gone there my whole life, we've gone to OBX, to Outer Banks since I, like we started going when I was six years old. We usually stay in the Kitty Hawk area and that's kind of like, I mean, we, other than a few years, we pretty much have gone there for 42 years. So it's kind of like, you know, second home.

Shane (18:21)
Hmm.

Spence Hackney (18:23)
Uh...

Shane (18:36)
Nice. Wow.

Spence Hackney (18:37)
That's great.

Shane (18:40)
So, do you and your husband have retirement dream plans of moving to Florida or coming over to the coast in Wilmington, North Carolina?

Spence Hackney (18:40)
Yeah.

Rachelle Beckner (18:49)
that might be the thing that makes us separate later in life. Like he wants to live in the mountains in a shack somewhere. And I'm like, well, you can have fun doing that because I'm finding some little condo on a beach somewhere. And yeah, I'm like, I would love to get back to Florida. And he's like, I don't know if I can do Florida. So we probably would look at North Carolina and where you can I'm like, you can vacation in the mountains.

Shane (18:53)
Hehehe

Spence Hackney (19:15)
I was getting there and say everybody who tells me I couldn't handle Florida and it's too cold up north, they all end up in North Carolina, specifically in Wilmington. So come on down. Everybody will be just like you.

Shane (19:23)
the

Rachelle Beckner (19:27)
Wait. Okay.

Shane (19:29)
Well, Rachelle, students can find you on MeetTheProf.com. And are there other ways that they could reach out to you or find you online, are you on social?

Rachelle Beckner (19:41)
I am on social. I mean, LinkedIn is a great place to connect professionally. I am on Instagram. I know students aren't. I'm not, I am not on any of the like, whatever it things that students are doing. Like I'm not on Snapchat or TikTok, but yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place for people to connect with me.

Shane (20:01)
Okay, yep.

I'm just super grateful that you are there in Clemson and loving on those students. And it is so good to meet you. Thank you for this time.

Rachelle Beckner (20:16)
Thank you. It's great to talk with you both.

Spence Hackney (20:16)
Absolutely. Yeah, great.

Shane Hartley (20:19)
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview and you can learn more as well as read about other Christian professors on our website, meettheprof.com. And you can search for professors by name or by state or even by college campus. And you can also find many helpful resources about questions that were in the interview and other ways of answering tough questions at Cru.org; and that's C-R-U .org.

And college students, if you would like to ask a question to a professor and potentially be on the show, this is how you do it. Follow us on Instagram, it's meettheprofofficial, and then upload us a video by direct message where you say your name, your college campus, what year you are, and then ask your question. And you can ask more than one question, and hopefully then you can be featured on the show. And if you enjoyed this, would you please share this episode with a friend?

... someone you think it would be helpful to. And please don't forget to follow or subscribe to the podcast. And if you're listening to this, but you would like to watch the videos of these interviews, we record them all and we put them on YouTube. So you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is Meet the Prof Official. And we would love to meet you there. And lastly, if you would like to financially support our Faculty Commons ministry with Cru, you can do so online

by going to: give.cru.org/0424344. So thank you for being with us and until next time, we hope you feel encouraged to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.