Paul Bobbitt Parts Ways With Wilson
Emily Cobb | January 29, 2025
Paul Bobbitt is the man who has been responsible for running the work program, one of Warren Wilson College’s (WWCs) three pillars alongside learning and service, since 2021. Bobbitt was a familiar face for many, often seen in Gladfelter, attending Student Government Association (SGA) meetings, facilitating discussions or in his Log Cabin office. However, in November 2024, he announced that his time at WWC was ending.
Despite his time at WWC being over, the work program still holds a special place in Bobbitt’s heart. He was a huge fan of WWCs hands-on learning experience as well as empowering women in construction.
“I think we do a really great job of supporting many different learning styles and the hands-on learning,” Bobbitt said. “What I love about the work program is that students don't have to have the skills to get the job. Most of the time when I supervised in facilities, my crew was 75 percent female-identified and 25 percent male-identified. It was a great pleasure of mine, having three sisters growing up, to give them an opportunity to get into a trade or learn a trade that otherwise is very male-dominated. It really does empower people when they can do something that they otherwise are being told they shouldn't be doing or can't do.”
Bobbitt was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan but spent most of his formative years in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. After graduating from the University of North Texas, he moved to Asheville, North Carolina securing a job at the French Broad Food Co-Op (FBFC) where he met his now wife.
Eventually, he got into construction where he met Shawn Swartz, the WWC Forestry Crew supervisor at the time.
“I’ve always really enjoyed working with my hands, and I wanted to kind of build that skill set,” Bobbitt said about construction. “Green building specifically really spoke to me because it spoke to my environmental ethos. I'm not an artist, and that is definitely my art, my craft is construction.”
Shortly after, the 2008 recession hit and Bobbitt needed a full-time stable job to support his family. Coincidentally Swartz soon called saying, “There's a job at Warren Wilson with your name written all over it.”
Then began his time at WWC in facilities as the first and last Rentals and Renovations Crew supervisor. The crew was responsible for maintaining WWCs rental units and performing campus remodels and construction work.
“[It was] My favorite job that I've ever had because it gave me an opportunity to teach and do construction, both things that I really enjoyed, and when you're a supervisor, the relationships that you build with students are just so crazy powerful,” Bobbitt said.
Bobbitt stays in contact with several of these students and has even officiated five weddings for alumni. In 2016, Ian Robertson, the dean of work, retired and Bobbitt applied for the job, initially working on an interim basis before getting the job full-time in 2017.
The job transition was trickier than Bobbitt expected.
“This was the first job I had where the people that I supervised, their work was not tactile, it was all computer-based,” Bobbitt said. “It was a skill set that I needed to learn. So it took me a little bit of time to kind of learn how to manage that, and not feel like I was overbearing or under-managing.”
During Bobbitt’s time at WWC, the students changed, specifically the widening of demographics with scholarship programs like Mile Post One and NC Free. The biggest change for Bobbitt was staff and faculty turnover.
“When I first started here, the carpentry supervisor retired at 46 years, John Griffith, our electrician, retired at 40 years, Tom Lam, our landscape supervisor, retired after 20 years,” Bobbitt said. “We just had a lot of people that were like me now, I feel now like the one with the institutional knowledge. The turnover since Covid has been hard to deal with. We just are churning through supervisors and you don't have any longevity of skills, because supervising is a wonderful job, but it's a very unique job. It's not supervising professional staff.”
He gained many fond memories during his years at WWC specifically when it comes to teaching students.
“Ramey Bell is one that comes to mind,” Bobbitt said. “She was a student that was on my crew a while back, and when she came to me, she did not know what a hinge on a door was. I remember the first time that I really saw her come to life, we were putting in a culvert over on North Lane, so we had to cut the asphalt. I had her with a 16-inch concrete cut-off saw. She was very timid and very nervous, and I kept encouraging her, ‘You really got to own the tool, Ramey, because the tool is going to own you.’ And when I saw that look in her eye when she was just like, ‘Shit, yeah, like, I got this.’ That was a remarkable moment.”
Bobbitt continued siting an experience that combined his love for construction and teaching.
“Nick Shaw was my first real student memory of powerful learning,” Bobbit said. “We did a structural remodel in the basement of St Clair. So I kept talking to students about load and load bearing and point loads. I remember seeing the light bulb moment when he finally started to look around and see it, and he's like, ‘Wow, okay.’ He's actually working with some architect friends of mine, and they were talking about this guy, Nick Shaw, and I was like, I know Nick, I taught Nick what he knows.”
Bobbitt is leaving WWC to join First Onsite, a company that deals in property restoration, as a project manager. A job he is excited to dive into because he gets to be a “worker bee.”
Though Bobbitt has thoroughly enjoyed his time at WWC, he is ready to embark on his next endeavor. With his parting, he asked to share a few words with the students.
“Keep being you,” Bobbitt said. “You guys are awesome. You come to us with passion and energy and capacity, and I think just keep bringing that, keep loving the place [WWC]... Please continue to value the opportunity to be professional colleagues to my professional colleagues.”