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Scholarship is a Family Affair for Professor Emeritus

At 96, Professor Emeritus Chauncey Beagle still has a twinkle in his eye and a spring in his step. Beagle and his wife, Nancy, live in Boulder and enjoy reading, attending social activities, and planning annual family reunions.

With nine grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren, they must continually find larger mountain cabins for their reunions! But retirement has not slowed Beagle’s enthusiasm for CU, his dedication to higher education, and the importance of giving back.

Beagle has been a CU donor for more than 30 years and has supported numerous scholarship funds in addition to his own, the Beagle Family Scholarship, which he and his family established in 2006 for CU-Boulder accounting students.

“Scholarships can be a life-changing experience,” says Beagle. “My parents were not well-to-do and scholarships enabled me to go to college. Scholarships have been very important in my life; therefore I have a good reason for providing them for others.”

Melissa Lenyo (‘12 accounting), a recipient of the Beagle Family Scholarship, says, “My future is wide open ... I know it is (because of) the generosity of the Beagle family.”

Without the scholarships he received as an undergraduate, Beagle says he would not have gone to college. He attended Miami University in Ohio, where he was awarded two scholarships, then transferred his junior year to the University of Illinois, where he received two fellowships. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in accounting. Beagle moved to Boulder and began teaching accounting at CU in 1957. Prior to that he worked for the War Department in Chicago, served in the Navy during World War II, was employed with various accounting firms—including as a partner at Filbey, Filbey & Beagle in Urbana, Illinois, and taught at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Beagle taught at CU for 29 years, where he was highly regarded by students, fellow faculty, staff, and administrators. He retired in 1986.

In a 1962 letter to Provost Oswald Tippo, Dean Lawrence D. Coolidge wrote:
When he came to us, he had a fine background of experience in the public accounting profession and sound academic training ...It remained to be seen whether Professor Beagle would add needed breadth of outlook and interest to our accounting division. Professor Beagle has exceeded our fondest hopes, I think, in this respect. He has shown interest in not only all phases of our accounting curriculum but in the related business fields and underlying quantitative disciplines as well.

Beagle saved all his old grade books and he still exchanges letters and cards with former students. In 2009 one of his students made an anonymous donation to the Leeds School and requested that a faculty office space be named in Beagle’s honor. A highlight of Beagle’s year is the annual Leeds Scholarship Event where he, Nancy, and his four daughters, two of whom are CU graduates, get to meet their scholarship recipients.