With over 200 undergraduate majors and countless classes offered by each program, Ohio University’s number of course instructors and professors can seem overwhelming. However, now and then a name will stand out among the rest as an exemplary teacher and dedicated mentor. One of those names is David Wanczyk.
Wanczyk has a doctorate in English, Creative Writing: Nonfiction, from OU, as well as a master’s degree in English, Creative Writing: Poetry, from the same institution, which he worked toward with Mark Halliday, who is still teaching poetry. He is currently an assistant professor of instruction for classes ranging from English 1510 to literary classes geared toward upperclassmen.
Wanczyk has been at Ohio University for 20 school years, with this year being his fifth as a professor. His professional journey has involved years as an adjunct professor and coordinator of creative writing events, and it all began with a love of the classroom.
“I had so many wonderful teachers in high school and college, and I loved being part of a classroom setting and being part of discussions,” said Wanczyk. “I liked the way they (professors) went about their lives … their associative intelligence when it came to reading literature and thinking about how it could impact our way of being in the world, our relationships, our way of coping, and I loved being part of that exchange,”
An integral part of Wancyzk’s genesis in the world of higher education was his theatrical background, having received one of his bachelor's degrees in theater at the College of the Holy Cross. The professor uses his performance skills to balance the control of teaching with the free-form creation of an entertaining scene in a classroom.
“I think that makes me a little more comfortable with projecting my voice and being playful in class, improvising, riffing with students sometimes,” he said.
Wanczyk said he develops this collaborative atmosphere to facilitate engaging discussions with his students.
“My favorite part (of this job) is when discussion in a class takes off surprisingly, and I have five or six people with hands up because they want to talk about an idea that is in the literature,” he said. “That means that some way that I’ve selected or talked about a particular essay or poem has reached people in a way that makes them think that it can be an important part of their life, if only for those few minutes.”
The detective work of looking at a text and reading into deeper meaning alongside the patrons of his classroom is one of the biggest draws Wanczyk felt toward his profession. However, his love of English spans beyond just reading. In his introductory level classes, Wanczyk encourages students to write with “charitable communication,” a concept that he explained as wanting students “to be generous with themselves and what they’re giving, but to think about how their writing is connecting to other people.”
At the very least, Wanczyk is concerned with reaching his students through positivity and warmth.
“I’ve thought about being educational caffeine, so I have to have high energy, but also more and more, especially since COVID,” he said. “I often think that regardless of what I have to give on a particular day, I get a chance to be kind to a lot of 20-year-olds. If that’s all that happens, I suppose that’s a pretty good start, and then hopefully that feeling in the classroom ends up generating good work as well.”
Part of that good work manifests in the New Ohio Review, a literary magazine that Wanczyk has been the editor of since 2015. The magazine accepts submissions from all over the world, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and an annual feature piece. The latter section of the current edition, Wanczyk’s 15th issue, is a collection of Ohio stories.
“We basically try to put out the best literature we can,” he said. “I think we are known for poetry, sometimes narrative poetry or memoir-based, chatty poetry, but we think about the reader, about the audience. We’re trying to reach out in different ways to create a magazine that’s going to be engaging.”
This year, five essays from the New Ohio Review were listed in Best American Essays as “notable.” Wanczyk enjoys getting graduate and undergraduate students involved in the process of publishing, from copy editing to web design.
Wanczyk is also involved in the Spring Literary Festival, which this year will feature Hilary Plum as the guest writer. According to Wanczyk, the purpose of the festival is to encourage involvement.
“We really try to get people involved in creative writing events, even if you're an English major, seeing people who are working writers coming in can be inspiring, so we love to get books in people's hands, get poems in front of their eyes, and to keep excitement for literature going on campus,” he said.
After two decades in Athens, Wanczyk views the town very positively.
“I have a wife and two kids now, it’s a beautiful place to raise a family and kind of walk from home to campus,” Wanczyk said.
While Wanczyk overwhelmingly enjoys living and working around Ohio University, he wishes there could be more interconnectivity among faculty.
“I think because of the nature of college, sometimes we feel a little bit like free agents as professors and don’t have a great idea of what's happening in students’ other classes, so it’s hard to know how to be as actively involved in their education as we could be,“ said Wancyzk. “That’s what’s great about teaching though, it continues to be a challenge and it never really ends.”
