Changing the Conversation
In 2015, about a month after she and Professor Jill Lamberton taught writing to incoming freshmen in the College’s new program for first-year students, Professor Crystal Benedicks was standing before her faculty colleagues at the annual Ides of August. They had been listening to clips from her students’ audio essays— work more intimate, articulate, and eye-opening than most had come to expect from freshmen—and they had been applauding.
Benedicks spoke about the writing that was done in the class, how students had embraced the assignments, and then she summed up the philosophy of the program:
“These students have the right to be engaged, to use the resources of the College, to be fully here.”
If those at the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Student Transition had heard the passion with which Benedicks spoke those words, they might have honored her then. But Benedicks’ work—and the Wabash Liberal Arts Immersion Program she co-leads—has since caught their attention. In December 2018 it named her one of the Ten Outstanding First- Year Student Advocates in the nation.
“It’s an amazing honor and it took me utterly by surprise because it is something that we, as a college, come together around,” Benedicks says. “I think there are a lot of people and programs that built this and this award goes to all of the WLAIP and all of the people who are involved with the Writing Across the Curriculum program, which is all of the people who teach here.”
the blend of teaching and leadership that Benedicks has displayed since arriving on campus in 2007 has it roots in her graduate school experience. While attending the City University of New York and envisioning her future in academia from oak-paneled offices, she got involved with programs that supported particularly vulnerable student populations.
Benedicks loved the experience and continues the work here, bolstered by the opportunities that exist for students.
“One of the things that I loved about the identity of this College was that it gives opportunities to students in the liberal arts that ordinarily wouldn’t even be on their radar,” she says. “The great thing about working at Wabash is that if you want to do something, you can. There is plenty of support for everything.”
Her co-teacher in WLAIP, Lamberton marvels at Benedicks’ ability to pay such close attention to many things—to faculty, to students, to texts—and to synthesize the information in ways that are transformative for nearly everyone.
“Crystal puts in so much time with students because she’s genuinely interested in them and their stories,” Lamberton says. “She is interested in who they are and remembers that they will grow through their time at Wabash. So much of Crystal’s teaching is in the one-on-one work.”
“She leads conversations about how and why we teach writing across a college education, and she offers strategies to colleagues who want to be better writing instructors,” says Dean of the College Scott Feller. “Thanks to a decade of her leadership, our faculty no longer believes that first-year writing instruction is only the responsibility of high-school teachers or the English department.”
“The particular way this College sings is when people join together to do things,” Benedicks says. “We get together in a room and create something. That’s what happened here. I have no idea why this award is going to me. This award goes to so many of the people who built so many of the programs over the years.”