100 Years of Teamwork: A Brief History of Warren Wilson College’s Work Program
Iris Seaton | October 6, 2022
Warren Wilson College (WWC) is one of only nine work colleges nationwide and is the only work college in North Carolina. The history of WWC’s work program has ties to the very beginning of the school’s history when it was established as a small farm school in 1894. The program, like so many other aspects of Warren Wilson’s history, has changed dramatically over the years that it has existed.
Warren Wilson first graduated a high school class in 1923, a century from the next class to be graduated in 2023. Henry Jensen, then director of the work program, wrote the 1974 book, “A History of Warren Wilson College.” His work provides images of how different the program’s current iteration is from the original expectations of student work contributions.
Jensen used early versions of the work program — such as manual labor being punishment for student infractions — to highlight its change throughout WWC history. Jensen described the need for wood to stoke the boiler and the role of tree stumps in disciplinary action.
“The stumps had to be cleared,” Jensen wrote. “This was usually done as punishment for some infraction of school rules, the size of the stump supposedly fitting the dimension of the misdemeanor.”
The establishment of an hourly wage is a part of the work program that once seemed alien due to the original expectations of the school. A further example of how alien parts of the original work expectations were during the early days of the school to the work program of the 2000s is explained by Jensen in the context of the eventual establishment of an hourly wage.
“A maximum hourly wage was established and this varied with the age and weight of the boys,” Jensen wrote. “The larger fellows could earn more but also had to pay more in tuition because they ate more.”
As in many cases of work and schooling traditions over generations, more changes have been made to the work program in the past century than the abolishment of weight and age-based pay scales.
Beyond punishment by tree stump, the boys who made up the student body in the 1920s often worked jobs on campus that reflected skills they had learned before enrollment. According to Jensen’s book, the amount of hours worked by the boys varied, but is thought to have been around three hours daily for six days out of the week.
“There was cooking and cleaning to do, planting crops, hoeing corn, harvesting and orchard work,” Jensen wrote regarding the most common needs for workers on Warren Wilson campus during the early days of the school.
Many of the roles involved in running a farm school still exist today; WWC’s Farm, Garden and Landscaping Crews are only a few examples of the many that are similar to the original farm school jobs. However, as the school expanded, so did the need for more diverse positions.
As of 2022, the school boasts over 85 different work crews. These crews fall into six main categories: academic support, administrative office support, campus program support, craft support, facilities and management support and land management.
Full lists of the individual crews under these six umbrellas can be found on the Warren Wilson website. To understand the gradual diversification of these roles is a larger task.
Through some trawling of the WWC archives and the many books written over the years on the inner workings of the school, some insight into the steady changes can be found.
David Cleaver, Director of the Work Program in 1973, suggested a breakdown of student workers in the fall semester of the year, including the positions required to run the school. During 1973. The crews included:
Laboratory Assistants and Tutors
Secretaries, Departmental
Food Service
Service Personnel, Admin. & Students
Office Secretaries & Clerks
Book Store, Child Care Center
Infirmary, Laundry, Library
Post Office, Publications
Janitorial
Maintenance
Farm
Fire Department
Heating and Plumbing
Landscape
Engineering
Campus Crew, and drivers
Carpentry & Painters
Craft Shop construction
Electricians and linesmen
Electric Preventive Maintenance
While many crews have been added, many have been dissolved over the years for various reasons. Some reductions, like the Horse Crew, are recent. Paul Bobbitt, the Associate Dean of Work at WWC, has been with the college for 14 years, spending half that time at his current position. Some of these more recent changes have been observed by him first hand.
“The horses had some health issues and it was going to be increasingly expensive to basically just keep the horses in a place where they weren't in pain,” Bobbitt said.
Some crew removals are a product of an era which is now behind the college. For example, one handbook from the 1960s describing each of the student crews details the job expectations for the “President’s Home Crew,” made up only of one supervisor and one student whose duties were essentially cleaning the house of the school president.
On the other hand, some things have remained the same over the years. Perhaps most importantly, the degree to which the college depends on student workers in order to function.
“The work program at Farm School is based on three propositions,” Jensen wrote. “It must supply the necessary manpower to accomplish those tasks vital to the life of the school. It must offer students an opportunity to work through school. It should, according to our educational philosophy, be as instructive as the complementing academic program.”
These principles including the necessity of student work have carried forward throughout the years since Jensen wrote on them in 1938. Though changes have been made to compensation, required hours and jobs themselves, much of the philosophy is reflected in the current era of WWC.
“Warren Wilson College’s distinctive approach to education intentionally integrates academics, work, and community engagement to cultivate curiosity, empathy, and integrity,” the college website states. “We empower graduates to pursue meaningful careers and lead purposeful lives dedicated to a just, equitable, and sustainable world.”
Along with this direct reflection of Jensen’s statements on the 1938 educational philosophy demanding that student work be complementary to academics, the necessity of student work at Warren Wilson is still alive today.
“[The school is] heavily dependent on students for labor,” Bobbitt said. “So I guess the question would be if students weren't around, what would we do? We would have to add significant staff to cover that.”
Bobbitt went on to suggest considering the math; with around 700 students at Warren Wilson as of 2022, each working around 8 hours weekly, one could have some idea of the large amount of full time employees would need to be hired in order to replace student workers.
As in Jensen’s statements, Bobbitt explained the further importance of student work as a means of educating students and allowing for personal and career development alongside the traditional college experience.
“The mission of the work program is to provide students with meaningful work learning opportunities, right?” Bobbitt said. “So they are able to gather the experience in that field — that discipline — and gain some very valuable career competencies in the process. The purpose of the worker is also to provide labor to the college right? So it's kind of a two-fold process if that makes sense. So to ensure that [there is] work, learning and to supply the operations of the college.”
Ian Robertson, the now retired dean of the work program, held several different positions over the three decades he worked at the college from 1981 until his retirement in 2016. Like Jensen and Bobbitt, his insight into the work program held the sentiment that the work program was something necessary and meaningful to the college in more ways than one.
“It's very important that everybody realizes that you can't have a work college without a work component, you can’t have an academic program without classes,” Robertson said. “All of them have got to work together in the service program too. So it's that Venn diagram. Work, academics and service, and when they cross, that's when the real learning happens. Not just the real learning, but the unique learning that can only happen at a work college, which is why you hope people choose it. Because they recognize that they're going to get something different.”
Like the program itself, student opinions on the work that is required of them have fluctuated over the years. Anonymous alumni comments from the 1960s were gathered in one archived document titled “Alumni Work Program Comments.” The document contains columns of comments both praising the program and criticizing aspects of it.
Some comments from the praise column include:
“The responsibility of the job I did made me prove myself. Frankly, I feel I learned as much or more from the job program than the academic program.”
“Through the experience I was able to explore more on my own in many ways. This led me to choose my present professional and educational goals.”
Warren Wilson’s website now reflects creative crews such as Fiber Arts, Blacksmithing and Fine Woodworking, as well as crews consisting of assistants to various creative departments.
Some complaints, however, have remained consistent throughout time.
For a century, WWC graduates enter a new chapter of life with not only academic experiences, but the development that comes with years of hard work for the community.
The philosophy behind the work program has always extended deeper than the simple necessity of the work itself. The true spectrum of benefits for community, individual growth and valuable experience has been stated again and again by those closely involved.
“People don't realize just how much time our students spend in the community giving up their time,” Robertson said. “That was always sad for me, that people [thought] ‘oh yeah, just a bunch of hippies. They don't know what they're doing.’ They’d only have to spend a day here to know what people are doing here, and how important it is to this community and the wider community, and how important it is to the growth of the individual.”