After what will be 31 years as Director of Student Publications and Printing, Lesley Marcello will soon bid farewell to Nicholls.The 55-year-old Marcello, who said she is not entirely sure what she plans to do after leaving, will depart from her position in August.

“I just thought it was a good time to go. I’ve been thinking about it for about a year and a half,” she said.

Marcello graduated from Goldsboro High School in Goldsboro, N. C., in 1964.

“I knew I wanted to go into journalism. I had known that since I was in the 9th grade. I edited the newspaper in the 9th grade.”

She also edited her high school newspaper.

“In fact, we won medalist awards my junior and senior years from Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the same convention that we go to now,” she said.

She enrolled at St. Mary’s Junior College.

“I went to St. Mary’s, which was a girl’s school, because I wanted to go to the University of North Carolina, but freshmen women could not go [at the time],” she said.

Marcello was able to enter the University of North Carolina as a junior. While in college, she worked summers at The Goldsboro News-Argus, her hometown newspaper.

“I talked to the people there a lot about what to major in in college, and they told me to pick an academic field. They recommended things like international relations, political science or English,” Marcello said.

“They said journalism was a profession, and whatever you needed to learn you would learn by working in newspapers. I just thought that was really good advice, because the people I was talking to were editors, and they either had degrees in business or English, and no one had a degree in journalism.”

Marcello said majoring in English was a logical choice since she had always liked it. She went on to receive her B. A. in 1968 from UNC.

Her career in journalism continued that summer.

“Lo and behold, this man called me one day and said he called the school of journalism, and they had given him my name. He said he owned a newspaper on the outer banks of North Carolina,” Marcello said.

The newspaper was The Coastland Times in Manteo.

“I thought, `Wow! Go to the beach.'”

Marcello said the best thing that happened to her there was being associated with a retired professional journalist who worked at the newspaper.

“He would go over all my stories with me, and it was like having this personal tutor to sit there and help me comb my writing style,” she said.

This is what Marcello has been doing for students for decades at The Nicholls Worth.

Working at The Coastland Times was an exciting experience for her.

“I interviewed astronauts, politicians and different people who would come to the beach,” she said.

Fate would soon intervene, and the young journalist would find herself in Louisiana after only a few months at The Coastland Times.

Hal Tanner, Jr., the son of the publisher of The Goldsboro News, was the managing editor of the (Thibodaux) Daily Comet. The elder Tanner told his son about a young writer looking for employment elsewhere.

The 22-year-old Marcello had never been west of the Mississippi, but agreed to make the journey for an interview.

“I flew down here for an interview, and spent the weekend with Hal and his wife, Linda, who had both been students of my mother’s when they were in high school, and I fell in love with the idea of a small town,” she said.

“I stayed at the Comet for two years, until somebody from the University came and asked if I wanted to apply for the job of adviser.”

She said Rick Reso, previous publications director, was overwhelmed with that job and being in charge of public relations for the University. Ronnie Boudreaux, director of alumni affairs [not the same Ronnie Boudreaux serving as director of personnel services today], had approached her.

“Dr. Galliano had sent him to talk to me, because I covered Nicholls as part of my beat, so they would see me at a lot of different functions.”

Marcello accepted the position in the fall of 1970.

“I have been in this same job. I have had different titles. The titles have changed over the years, but, basically, the constant has been doing the student media. I have had other jobs added to that along the way.”

English teacher was one of the added jobs, and she has been teaching since then, except from 1989 to 1995.

“I thoroughly enjoyed that side because that was so totally different from what I was doing [at Student Publications and Printing],” she said.

“It was developmental English, and I got to see students and be part of the academic side, and the most wonderful thing was that I got to be part of the English department. It means that when I critique the paper, I would use the same standards as in my classes.”

While at Nicholls, Marcello received her master of arts in psychology and guidance.

She would also meet her husband at Nicholls.

“I have been married for 26 years to Robert (Bobby) Marcello who has supported me through all the activities I have been involved in.

“We have two fantastic children, 19-year-old twin daughters: Elizabeth, a sophomore at Loyola in New Orleans, majoring in English, and Margaret, also a sophomore, at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, majoring in general studies.”

Marcello said she believes students have much to gain by working at Student Publications and Printing.

“If you majored in whatever, everybody was working to do this particular project on deadline and working as a team. It is the ultimate team activity, that people realize that what they do with their deadlines and their time affects other people, and, to me, that’s the best lesson for the real world that you’ll ever get,” she said.

“I tell people sometimes that what we’re doing is not producing necessarily the best journalists or editors, but we’re trying to produce the best people.”

Many of those “best people” still remember Marcello’s influence.

“She encouraged me, when I was a sophomore, to consider getting into the upper levels of management of The Nicholls Worth, which it would not have occurred to me to do,” Dr. James Stewart, head of the department of mass communication, said.

“I served as editor as a junior, and the next year she said to think about doing some work on the yearbook. So, I was editor of the yearbook.”

Stewart said his experiences with Marcello gave him the confidence he needed to pursue a successful career in journalism and education.

“In a nutshell, she encouraged me to take some chances in order to learn things.”

He said the autonomy given to students in producing newspapers and yearbooks was critical.

“She helped them, guided them, but she allowed them to make their own decisions, which is very important in developing anybody.”

Blake Petit, former lagniappe editor, also said Marcello had a significant influence on his life.

“I’d only been at The Nicholls Worth for a few weeks, and I thought the work load was getting to be too much. I went to Mrs. Lesley with the intention of quitting, but she convinced me to stick it out with a reduced story load,” he said.

“The next semester, I became entertainment editor and started a column that I continue writing to this day in my position with the St. Charles Herald-Guide. I discovered a talent for humor — one I never suspected was there — that has served me well, and I doubt I would have done so without her.”

Marcello’s professionalism was noticed by Andrew Angelette, former sports editor.

“I always thought that she handled her people well, let them develop their writing skills at a pace each individual writer was comfortable with,” he said.

Angelette, now retired, was
a regional manager with Cable Television, Inc.

Marcello’s closeness to the students was not lost on John L. Weimer, III, judge for the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal for the State of Louisiana.

“When I first arrived at Nicholls and met Lesley, I was positive she was another student on campus assigned to The Nicholls Worth because of her youthful looks, which were coupled with her youth. It wasn’t until I was there for some period of time that I realized she was actually part of the University staff,” he said.

Weimer held the positions of news editor, assistant advertising manager and staff artist for The Nicholls Worth.

“She had a major impact on my career. She played a significant role in helping me develop my analytical skills and writing skills, which are important for an attorney and for a judge,” he said.

“I wish her well in retirement. The University will lose someone who has been a tremendous asset.”