Bill Wilson's career as a former student of the Air Force Academy, traveler, and English teacher in Vietnam, took the next step when he accepted a position at St. Michael’s in 1972. In 2005, he accepted the position as provost, a senior administrative officer. After 36 years of being at St. Michael's, Wilson announced his retirement from the position.
Chapter One
Wilson enrolled in the Air Force Academy in 1959; he was the first of his family to enroll in college. The Academy provided a free education with a guaranteed job and avoidance of the draft, he says.
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Bill Wilson in Nicaragua in 2002. (Photo courtesy of Bill Wilson) |
He received a fellowship to attend Columbia University for a year, where he received a master’s degree in political science. He later returned to the Air Force for four years and then returned to graduate school, he says.
During the time of the Vietnam War, he attended Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.
Military experience complimented his decision to teach English to the students in Vietnam, he says. Wilson taught his first class in 1965.
“That’s where I got the bug for teaching,” he says.
During his purple knighthood
After graduate school at Tufts, Wilson accepted a teaching position at St. Michael’s in 1972 as an assistant professor in the political science department. He later advanced to associate professor.
Wilson has taught many international law classes, including a first-year seminar on Vietnam, he says.
“He didn’t teach you what to think, but how to think,” senior Katie Barthelmes, says.
Wilson’s vision for his first-year seminar was to help students learn about other cultures, and how the United States impacts other societies, Barthelmes says.
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Bill Wilson at the |
He strives to get to know his students on a personal level, she says, even inviting them over to his house to meet his family.
“He’s really laid back and wants you to think for yourself,” she says.
Wilson says he wanted to have students deal with issues of how they remember things and how history is written.
In 2001, Wilson received a master’s degree from the Masters of Art in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATESOL) program at St. Michael’s, he says.
When Wilson went on sabbatical to Vietnam in 2001, he taught an English class for the National University in Hanoi. With his love for teaching English as a second language, he wanted to establish a connection between Vietnamese and American students by assigning each of his first-year seminar students a pen pal from Vietnam, he says.
Two years after his sabbatical, Wilson became associate dean of the college.
Religious studies professor John Kenney, who served as dean of the college from 1995 to 2005, admires Wilson’s thoughtfulness and level-headedness.
“His ability to think clearly and rationally about issues really had an impact on me and influenced my own way of proceeding in my job,” he says.
In 2005, Wilson was offered a position as the provost by the president of St. Michael’s at the time, Marc vanderHeyden. Kenney was retiring as dean, and the current provost at the time was retiring as well.
The provost is responsible for everything academic. Wilson says his position as provost is similar to being the “Chief Academic Officer.”
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Bill Wilson during a summer 1997 Fulbright trip in Quetta, Pakistan. |
International law classes have not been taught since he accepted the position as provost. No one else was as passionate in international law, he says.
“The best curriculum is to let people teach what they love,” he says.
The beat goes on
“It is very easy to retire from administration; it is harder to retire from teaching,” Wilson says.
He says he plans to teach more, either in a community college system or other countries. He also loves to travel, having been to Vietnam, Pakistan, Nicaragua and Japan.
“I’ve always tried to move around a bit and get an on-the-ground sense with international politics,” he says.
His relationship with his students is based on his own beliefs that students are more than just students, he says.
“It’s been a great run for me,” he says. “I owe a lot to the college along the way and all the students for 36 years.”