Beck Banks: New Communications Professor
Ada Lambert | April 6, 2023
Warren Wilson College (WWC) will be introducing new communication major this upcoming fall semester. In the past few months, a series of candidates for this position visited WWC to take part in a unique interviewing process where they got to meet with students and faculty. Beck Banks was selected for the position and will be teaching three new courses in the fall.
“I've been looking around for a job that would fit me really well for the past couple of years and I saw the posting for this and I thought, ‘oh, that would be pretty great,’” Banks said. “I was only applying for places where I felt like they had good values that would be similar to my own and locations I would like. And I mean, Warren Wilson has a great reputation. So I was happy to see that posting.”
Bank’s decision to join the WWC community was also heavily influenced by the interview experience.
“The level of communication was fantastic,” Banks said. “I didn't feel like I was just a cog in a wheel or a process that people had to go through, it was so much more personal and inviting than other places I had interviewed. Which is huge. I think a lot of universities don't understand that they need to start with the kind of community they have when they are interviewing people.”
On top of that, Banks found that the inclusion of students in the process was unique and helpful for them to better understand the culture at the school.
“I think there's a lot of monitoring when you're waiting for a job so the idea that I would be left to chat with students, I don't think that most schools would have that comprehension,” Banks said.
“I had some alone time with groups of students to be able to talk about like, ‘hey, what is this campus really like for you? What can I expect?’ And then also getting a lot of personal questions too — the knowledge isn't just contained to the classroom.”
Since 2016, Banks has been a professor at the University of Oregon (UO). Prior to this, they worked as a newspaper reporter, took part in nonprofit publications, taught at New York University (NYU) and also was involved in event management at the University of Pennsylvania. They have worked in many different positions in relation to communications, but their experience as a reporter was very influential on their path.
“I learned more in two years as a daily reporter than I think I did in the four years previous [in college], which is to say you just learn a ton as a reporter,” Banks said. “I worked tons of hours, too.”
After moving around a bit and exploring different aspects of journalism, Banks received a master’s degree from NYU and decided to try teaching.
“I applied for a few programs and a lot of them were actually back in the South,” Banks said. “I got a little concerned because of the Trump situation in 2016 so I picked one out in Oregon, which was the furthest one away, my wife had some family there, it felt like a really good fit.”
Their career at UO has provided them with the resources to understand their teaching style and delve deeper into topics that are meaningful to them as a person while also incredibly relevant to the current human rights issues in the U.S.
“I've been happy out here like it's been a really nice thing to do,” Banks said. “I’ve gotten fairly entrenched with my research about what was happening with trans people in rural areas, looking back at my life experience growing up in East Tennessee, and their use of media, activism and representation on the screen.”
Banks will be incorporating these topics into their coursework for the fall. As of now, the courses being offered include: Writing for the Media, Media and Society, and Queer and Trans Media Studies. They plan to have students work hands-on and gain real experience with local nonprofits.
“I see a lot of potential for having these classes help the communication program, they have a tendency to market themselves and market their schools,” Banks said. “So this outward facing work where we can make bigger portfolios for students but also increase it presume also, which is already known as a great tool if you can just a little bit more so again, excited to be headed back to kind of my home area.”
During their search for a career, Banks encountered institutions that were not as willing to offer courses that were intersectional. WWC’s positive reaction to these types of courses was relieving for Banks.
“Some places seemed like they wanted to hire me, but they didn't want anything that was trans with it,” Banks said. “Like ‘we understand that you can teach all these classes that you can do all this kind of stuff but oh, your research, oh, your identity.’ That was unspoken most of the time but in one case it was very spoken. With WWC, it wasn't ‘we want you despite this,’ rather it was like ‘we want you also because of this.’ And that it's a wonderful, holistic way to be in the world.”
“It’s so nice coming in seeing that there are already so many little media classes, and it's just a matter of pulling them together and saying ‘here's the emphasis’ by making them stronger, and then adding those other classes to create something that I think will be dynamic,” Banks said. “I think it will be a game changer at the school and the great thing is WWC is already for game changers.”