Meet the #MissDelaware Contestants: Emily Beale
Title: Miss New Castle County
Platform: Protect, Preserve, and Conserve
Interesting Fact: I helped save a nomad’s life in Morocco with a medical kit and fresh water
What you are looking most forward to for Miss DE week: I’m so excited to be around all the titleholders for a week! We always have fun at orientations and appearances so I can’t wait to be practically living with them.
Hi everyone! My name is Emily Beale, I’m a full-time University of Delaware student majoring in Marine Science and minoring in Spanish, a part-time stylist at the Christiana mall, trained volunteer for MERR, and a full-time titleholder!
This coming fall I’ll keep it local in Lewes, DE with UD’s “Semester in Residence” program where I will continue taking classes by video chat and have the opportunity to live with graduate students and perform field research with scientists for a few months (to be put on hold for a year if I'm Miss DE), but I think I’m probably best known for going around the world to support my platform, Protect, Preserve, and Conserve.
When I was 17, I went to Thailand with just a carry-on and lived with host families in different villages building sustainable projects and teaching. This started my passion for helping my global community, and since then I’ve helped run a sea turtle hatchery in Costa Rica, lived on a boat with researchers in Antarctica and counted penguin populations, rehabilitated injured cheetahs and lions in South Africa, and most recently did a conservation hike giving money to trail projects by climbing up to Mt. Everest Base Camp! I would never describe myself as adventurous (I still have yet to try pears...), but I definitely ended up in some crazy places for my platform.
Here in Delaware I drafted the legislature that passed as SCR69, creating Conservation Day in our state, and created a challenge within a New Castle County school that motivated students to think about the environment for the month between Earth Day and Conservation Day. A fourth grade class earned over 1,500 points by doing environmental tasks, leading to them winning the Environmental Challenge I created and the prize of a donation to their favorite Delawarean Environmental cause. I also volunteer with the Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute. This has led me to some interesting opportunities, like spending many hours in the car with a Loggerhead sea turtle and having to stop at a gas station to put saline in his eyes, and even (sadly) performing a necropsy on a dolphin. Most exciting of all, I joined forces with two other undergraduate UD students (art and psychology) and we wrote “A New Reef for Phil,” a storybook based on a scientific article! It blends a moral lesson with both a story and scientific facts, letting students learn advanced-level material without even realizing they’re learning, and will be available through the University of Delaware library shortly.
This has been such a whirlwind of a year as Miss New Castle County. I’m so grateful for the chance to be Miss Delaware where I could focus all of my time and energy on our community and my platform. I chase every dream and ambition I have and am eager to see where this journey with the Miss Delaware Scholarship Organization will take me!
You can follow Emily on her journey to #MissDelaware on Facebook, and on Instagram!
