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Denise: It’s funny because I had not intended, initially, to teach at a school like Wooster.
I was at Purdue University. I had been promoted and tenured there. But the thing that I really
enjoyed the most, I realized, was working with the undergraduates, and even though I
like my graduate students and I’m still in touch with a lot of them, but undergraduates
I found were a lot more interesting because they came in, they were really open to all
sorts of possibilities, and they were going to go out and do all sorts of different types
of things. And what interested me in it was that one it was very much focused on undergraduates,
and two that it also thought that research was important too, because I wanted to have
a place where I could continue to do my writing, but I could use that writing to be energized
in the classroom. Here the idea is that if you’re going to be advising students in
Independent Study, then you need to be able to do research yourself, and you need to have
time to reacquaint yourself with your research in a very focused kind of way. So that’s
a real opportunity.
I love Wooster students. I think that the things that come to mind immediately when
you talk about our students are that our students are ‘one’ nice; they’re just nice human
beings. They’re bright. They’re capable. They’re also very open to a challenge and
to learning more, to be pushed a little bit. And you see that in the classroom, you see
that with Independent Study process, and you see it even outside of the classroom where
you’re trying to get them to try something new, look for an internship, all those types
of things. They are multi-faceted. Our students come from all sorts of places. They may come
from Ghana. They may come from Ireland. They may come from Wooster, Ohio, or someplace
very close. I’ve had students who have done interesting things. One of my advisees a few
years ago put herself through school by starting a window washing business while she was here.
Others might be involved with athletics, but at the same time they’re very interested
in working and volunteer work of various types on campus. We have people who are doing research
papers, but who are also involved in the marching band.
You as a faculty member learn things from these projects, on topics that you yourself
would not necessarily pursue, that reinvigorate you for the classroom: new examples, new insights
into how communication might work in one of those places. And I think that the best thing
of all for me, when I first came here, I have to admit, I thought everyone seems really
high on I.S.; can it really be as good as they’re saying it is? And I’m here to
tell you, as somebody who has taught graduate students, it is! I think our best students
come out of here having written something that is very much akin to a Master’s thesis,
and they are extremely well prepared for graduate school.