Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­

June 5, 2026

Her tale of shivering South Florida students struggling with (comparatively) frigid Gainesville winters on the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ (Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­) campus conjures a scene from "It's a Wonderful Life," as Dr. Bea Awoniyi describes how she jumped in with both feet to warm up the SoFlo Saints in a makeshift hot cider station in her office — heavy on the cinnamon, light on the cloves. True story. "You could smell that cinnamon everywhere!" she recalls.

The gesture, for the mother of three grown kids, comes partly from "Who would be there to watch my own kids at college if I wasn't around?" Awoniyi says. The rest, from a culture, a calling, and decades of habit.  

Though Awoniyi's title didn't change during her 13-year tenure at Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ — "I'm ending where I started," she laughs — the job description for the soon-to-be retired Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs/College Ombuds grew over the years. "The real beauty of my job was that Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ specifically tasked me to commit both the time and the passion to dig deep into the needs of the students and what's behind them." 

Sharing some of these interactions over the years pauses "Dr. Bea" in a teary glance skyward as the details still move this administrator who wears her heart on her vocation. 

"The needs didn't change much, even after COVID," Awoniyi says. "What has continued to change over the years is the number of students who experience homelessness. That was something I wasn't prepared for, or was even aware of, because when you walk through a university with student housing, you don't see what you witness on a non-residential college." 

A sobering epiphany

"I still remember the story of a young man who moved to Gainesville to attend Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ living out of a black trash bag," Awoniyi says. "The campus police got involved with his living arrangements — which were outdoors, in stairways, wherever, and they brought him to me. I asked him 'Tell me what's going on.' He said 'I just came to do college; I don't know why they're worrying about me.' I laughed and told him 'It's because no one knows what's in your black trash bag!'" 

Dr. Bea's office became a secure locker for the student's newly endowed suitcase, then she worked with former Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ Athletics Director Jim Keites to offer shower facilities, provided that the student agreed to supply his own towel, which she purchased for him. 

"That was the beginning of my eyes being opened," Awoniyi says. "Here at Santa Fe College, my office became the resource." And through the years it became a confessional of sorts, the nomadic student later disclosing to her that he was doggedly fleeing a bad environment back at home, and his golden ticket to a new life was a Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ education — even if it meant actually living hand-to-mouth for a season. "Santa Fe became a literal home for him," Awoniyi says.

Her ability to extract the underlying kernel of a student's need, match it to available community resources and coalesce support has been Dr. Bea's superpower. It's one that drew the attention of Dr. Naima Brown, Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ Vice President for Student Affairs, when she was looking for her No. 2 back in 2012. She knew Dr. Bea to be a compassionate and resourceful leader in the student affairs space, and from her executive roles with AHEAD (Association on Higher Education and Disability), which inspired Dr. Brown to realign Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­'s Disabilities Resource Center so that it fell under Dr. Bea's charge in her new role.

"She is a college treasure and we are fortunate to have had her as a colleague," Brown says. "Dr. Bea is a generous philanthropist, a dedicated community servant, a visionary leader, an advocate for student success, a champion for accessibility, and an impactful mentor to many students and staff members. She will be sorely missed."

Ships passing in the night

The seeds for Dr. Bea's four-decade harvest of student success stories were modestly sown as an elementary teacher for grades 1, 2 and 5 in her native Nigeria. In 1984, she emigrated to the U.S. to join her husband, Dr. Caleb Awoniyi — former chief of anesthesiology with the VA hospital in Gainesville — at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale) to pursue further schooling, after which they tackled a logistical odyssey to advance their credentials and careers while raising a growing family.

"For a while, I called myself the 'spouse-trailer,'" Awoniyi jokes. "I worked for a couple years in Baltimore when Caleb went to Johns Hopkins University for his post-doctorate, and in Denver I took my first collegiate job at Red Rocks Community College while he was a professor at the University of Colorado." 

But the agreement for their next marital adventure was for the 'spouse-trailer' to take the lead, which was pointed toward Ames, Iowa. 

"Caleb was tired of writing research grants and wanted to go to medical school," Awoniyi says. "I got a job at Iowa State University and moved with my three kids. Caleb acquiesced to doing his medical residency at University of Iowa, two hours away in Iowa City. But it turned out his specialization in anesthesiology wasn't a match for a residency there." 

He wrapped up medical school back in Colorado while Dr. Bea paid the family's bills in Iowa. "With three teenagers to feed, one of us had to be working!" she laughs. 

Knowing Caleb's medical specialty was a match at the University of Florida, Dr. Bea put out feelers for jobs in the Sunshine State, while he took advantage of the med school 'scramble' process to land an internship in Des Moines for one year to be in the same state as the rest of the Awoniyi Family after several years of separation. But the reunion would have to wait a bit longer.

"Caleb and I were in the car together in Denver right after he signed the contract with Broadlawn Medical Center in Des Moines when I got a call from Florida State University for an interview," Awoniyi says. "I got the job and moved to Tallahassee."

The Rainmaker

Dr. Bea's knack for investigating then shining a spotlight on demonstrated need for potential funders made her a highly successful pitcher of proposals for grants that have undergirded success and opportunity for every conceivable segment of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­'s student population — First Gen's, displaced homemakers, veterans, low-income, special needs, justice-involved, transportation-challenged, workforce reconnectors, fundamentals strugglers.

"It starts with our Board of Trustees," says Awoniyi, who details how Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ has a strong track record of prioritizing students, even when state funds or partnerships threaten to sunset. "When we approach our Board and express 'This is a need in the community,' they embrace it. People in our community believe in the mission of the College, even after we took 'community' out of our name."

JoAnn Wilkes, coordinator for the Displaced Homemaker Program (DHP) at Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­, was welcomed into the Saints fold by Dr. Bea to help transform a stop-gap emergency grant into a comprehensive, in-house initiative for women wanting to study at Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ to reconnect with the workforce, typically coming from desperate circumstances. 

"Dr. Awoniyi would cultivate these women from very humbling situations, getting referrals from local assistance agencies, homeless centers, attorneys, other Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ students who got through with help," Wilkes says. "She would work through financial aid to get them homeless waivers, or help them cover rent or utilities bills. When the state dropped funding for the DHP several years ago, Dr. Bea worked with Dr. Jackson Sasser (previous president of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­) to take it in-house; I still remember his quote — 'I will sell cookies on the street corner before I let that go!'"

As self-proclaimed 'Care Ambassador,' Dr. Bea often works in lockstep with Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ faculty to refer a student in need with a "warm handover," transferring their trust from the instructor to Awoniyi, whose commitment to confidentiality is inviolable. "This is an adult environment, and I don't share information about the students to the parents without their consent. The relationship matters to me.

"I once sat a student down in front of me and asked 'Did you eat breakfast?' He said 'yes,' and I left it there. But I could see he was still in pain. I said 'Ok, tell me what's going on.' He said 'You asked me if I had breakfast, but you didn't ask me what I ate.'" The answer: a bottle of baby food he scavenged from a trash can.  

"I learned from that man!" Awoniyi says, still riled by the student's desperation, living in the richest nation on the planet. "People don't go hungry like that in Nigeria. Families come together. In America, there's a high level of independence that is hard to notice, and the culture is quick to blame people in need. I tell them 'You didn't do this; we failed you! If any of us is experiencing homelessness or doesn't have enough to eat, shame on us as a society! I got into these initiatives because, if there's one person with this need, it's one too many. And, if I can identify one, there's probably five more who didn't ever speak up." 

Accordingly, Dr. Bea's fingerprints are deep on Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ programs like Saints Care — the College's one-stop-shop for assistance — Displaced Homemaker Program, Upward Bound, TRIO. The list is exhaustive, except for her off-the-books hip pocket fund that quietly covered a multitude of right-now needs over the years, disclosed to no one but her.

Beyond the confines of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­, Dr. Bea's external leadership has only bolstered her effectiveness in tethering town to gown, and forging alliances that directly impact Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ students and the Gainesville community: Treasurer for the Johnson Scholarship Foundation (JÂ鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­) Board, the Florida Center for Students with Unique Abilities (FCSUA), the Neurodiversity (ND) Alliance; Board President for the Center for Independent Living of North Central Florida (CILNCF).  

Looking for the 'better angels' 

Dr. Bea's office is a renowned judgment-free zone, which is why students divulge vulnerable, brutally honest life circumstances to her like Imperial Stormtroopers under Obi-Wan Kenobi's mystical influence. But where she has been an unapologetic empath, she is equal parts enforcer if that relationship is violated. Trust, but verify.

"Since I don't give students any reason to lie to me, I take them at their word," Awoniyi says. "But, if you lie to me and that relationship is damaged, it takes a lot to earn it back."

When one student's failing grade and the explanation for it didn't add up to Dr. Bea, she dug further to uncover life circumstances that painted a clearer picture — in this case, relational abuse by an ex-partner. Awoniyi obtained a police report about the incident, which allowed the student to petition for a drop and a refund. 

This tenacity in weighing both sides of a story — having heard every story imaginable — made Dr. Bea a trusted mediator in her other duties as Ombuds for Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­.

"Without having the full story, you're never going to know," she says. "Even with Solomon 'splitting the baby,' both mothers were credible, and with no direct witnesses. You have to go deep."

Dr. Bea's legacy didn't just help turn the fortunes for untold Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ alumni who might have otherwise fallen through the cracks; she infused a culture of intuitive and compassionate student care into the DNA of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ in perpetuity. "I go home at the end of the day and I sleep very well, because I know I've done the best I can," she says.