Giving back is Katelyn Bedwell’s second nature: All about the Miss UL 2025 winner 

With her family and friends in the audience of the crowded auditorium, Katelyn Bedwell quietly awaited the results from the pageant. This wasn’t her first time on this stage though, as she has participated in the Miss University of Louisiana at Lafayette USA Pageant three times before. It’s her senior year, and with all the experience accrued from years past, Bedwell wasn’t nervous as she waited to hear who won, because she prayed about it. 

She knew there would be some disappointment if she was not able to achieve her goal of being Miss UL after four years of trying, but in the end she said to herself, “Maybe God put me in this pageant not so I could be Miss UL…maybe just to have this personal growth that has really turned me into the person I am today.” 

She said participating in the pageant was “one of the best decisions” she had ever made. Not only because it introduced her to kind and accomplished women on campus, but it also taught her how to be confident in herself. Growing up, in what Bedwell described as “middle of nowhere” Vermilion Parish, she had always been shy, so the pageant was how she decided to put herself out there her freshman year. 

“I knew the second I stepped foot on campus that it was something that I really wanted and I was gonna give it my all, every single opportunity I had,” she said. 

Today, Bedwell is a co-director of philanthropy for her sorority, Tri Delta, fundraising for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, a local cancer patient resource center. She is a senior nursing student, working 12-hour shifts at a local hospital, along with her classes. She is a third-year mentor for the UL LIFE program on campus, helping to teach a class of junior students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

As co-directors of philanthropy, in 2024, Bedwell and Reese Godchaux spearheaded a fundraiser for St. Jude’s Hospital, which raised $12,000 in two days. This year, the pair has organized a Philanthropy Week, which includes a myriad of fundraising events from Apr. 6 to Apr. 11, to raise money for Miles Perret. 

After learning all that, people will sometimes ask her how she does it, and “honestly,” Bedwell starts, “I’m not saying I don’t have hard moments, but every single one of these organizations that I pour myself into pours right back into me.” 

Giving back to her community is second nature to Bedwell, after growing up with her mom and aunt, who both majored in nursing, and her grandmother, who became a social worker. 

According to her, her family gave her the blueprint on what it meant to get a degree and use it to help others. 

She’d always recognized the importance of giving support to others, but she had learned how to receive support from her community in the same way. In her junior year, she said, she struggled the most in her nursing classes and was on the brink of failure because she felt like she had to do it all on her own. 

After attending her first study groups, though, Bedwell’s grades began to improve. 

Since then, she has been inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society of Nursing, where she is recognized as a part of the top 35% of her nursing class, continuing to follow in the footsteps of her mother and aunt. 

Along with the rest of the crowd, Bedwell’s loved ones erupt in a loud round of applause as she is crowned the winner of the Miss UL 2025 pageant. Bedwell herself erupted with tears as she accepted her sash and crown from Annabelle Picou, 2024’s winner. 

“I didn’t believe it,” she said. The goal she had worked towards had finally come and she was shocked she had actually done it. Even days later, she says she is still “on cloud nine” after her win. 

Bedwell is graduating this May and has taken a position to work as a nurse in an Acadia hospital. Though she is a little nervous about beginning her reign, along with her new job, that feeling is overtaken by her excitement to dive into her duties. “I wanna do everything. If there’s an opportunity to do something, send it to me,” she said. 

Speaking at Freshman Convocation and judging the Homecoming Fashion Show are high on the list of events she is eager to participate in. 

Most of all, Bedwell wants to create more involvement between the University and Miles Perret. 

Since she will be Miss UL as both a student and an alumni, Bedwell wants to use her reign as a way to show other alumni that graduating doesn’t mean an end to being a part of the University. “I think it’s gonna be special to take that journey as an alumni and just show people…once you turn the tassel, your college experience isn’t over. You get to start giving back in a unique and different way.”