As director of the College’s Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts and the Wabash National Study, Professor Charlie Blaich has analyzed data that identify the best practices in teaching in colleges and universities across the country. At the heart of those practices, Blaich says, are “signs of caring for students.
“You have students who are working really hard and being challenged, but they’re being challenged in the presence of adults who are invested in their future, and they know that.”
Ask John Dykstra ’13 and Scott Morrison ’14 where they’ve found those signs of caring at Wabash, and one name comes first: Howard Hewitt.
The director of digital media, Hewitt doesn’t teach a class, but students have learned more about journalism from him than anyone on the Wabash campus.
He doesn’t have office hours, but a stream of students climbs the Hovey Cottage steps for conversations that run the gamut from writing and news coverage to campus politics.
That’s because Hewitt is also the staff advisor for the College’s multiple award-winning newspaper The Bachelor. For the former newspaper reporter and editor, it’s a labor of love. And students know it.
“The first time I met Howard was at The Bachelor call out meeting my freshman year,” recalls Dykstra, now a reporter for the Crawfordsville Journal Review. “The way he engaged with freshmen sold me on joining the newspaper staff.”
“I’m not sure if I can do justice to all that Howard has done for me,” says Bachelor Editor in Chief Scott Morrison. “He goes out of his way to edit my stories to make me better. I have learned so much about journalistic writing from him, but I’ve also learned about leadership.”
“Howard’s care has been the most important factor in my professional life,” Dykstra says, “I came to Wabash interested in becoming a biology major but switched to English during freshman orientation. Howard fed my love for writing for the next four years and led me to a career in journalism. The internship he set up for me at the Journal Review led to my current job.
“Looking back, I’m amazed at how that first impression led to a friendship that had such a major impact on my life.”