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Wilson looks back on 50-year tenure
By Kate Gibson
Old Gold and Black Reporter

For over 60 years, Edwin Wilson has been an integral part of the university’s history – whether as a student, professor, dean, provost or as the senior vice president.

"Really, I fell in love with Wake Forest almost immediately. I knew it was my school, the place I wanted to be," Wilson said.

Indeed, since his first years on campus, Wilson has made this university his school, and also his life’s work.

Since 1939, when he entered the university as a freshman, Wilson has spent less than 10 years away from the campus. He has seen the university through the admittance of women and blacks, through three wars and through countless internal changes.

Students also recognize Wilson’s extraordinary impact on the university.

"What can you say about this guy?" senior Aaron Winter said. "He’s a living legend. You walk into the library and there’s his picture."

Despite this seemingly fated meeting of man and college, Wilson stumbled on the university purely by chance. On the way home from a summer vacation at the beach, Wilson and his family happened to drive through the town of Wake Forest, then the home of the university. The area and the college struck him immediately.

"I looked at the town and I thought it seemed like a nice place to go to school. It just captured my imagination, as things do sometimes. It was really the only school I applied to," he said.

During his years as a university student, Wilson says he had much the same experience as today’s students. He wrote for the Old Gold and Black, edited the Howler, was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity and graduated with a major in English.

The campus itself, however, was very different. When he entered the university, Wilson was one of about 1100 students, and they were taught by less than 100 faculty members. The university was a college then, and according to Wilson, "very much a Southern regional school."

"We were poorer then – both the students and the university. We were just coming out of the Depression and we had very little in the way of material possessions. The college was not well endowed – the library had about 120,000 volumes then; there was no student union. There was no affluence at that time and you might say that that changes the nature of life," Wilson said.

Also, at that time the university was located in the town of Wake Forest, NC, which Wilson describes as "a traditional college town."

"The town and the campus were quite contiguous – we went downtown to go to the movies, the soda shop, the post office, for whatever we might need. Very few students had cars, and so everyone stayed on campus for the weekends. You could find within the town almost anything you really wanted," he said.

Wilson also described the intimacy of the student body. "We had a kind of camaraderie in the school that was extremely pleasant," he said.

"I knew practically everybody on the campus – one did in those days. All the people of different majors, with different interests knew each other. I knew members of the basketball and football team almost as well I as I knew the other students who worked in communications. The faculty members were extremely approachable, and I guess I knew all the faculty as well."

World affairs were also different during that time. On Wilson’s first day of class, Germany attacked Poland, and the Second World War officially began. Therefore, in addition to the usual stress of college life, students dealt with rations, the draft and worried about friends and family who were serving in the armed forces.

"Every month some people would leave (the university) to go into military service, so the class I began in 1939 was considerably diminished by the time I graduated. You looked ahead every day and wondered when you would have to leave school," he said.

Despite these obvious contrasts, Wilson says the university has remained largely the same as it ever was – a small university with a close-knit campus atmosphere.

"The closeness of the students and faculty is the same it has always been – we have tried consciously to preserve this. When we moved to Winston-Salem, nearly all the students and faculty moved with the university, and they brought with them the same qualities of spirit that they left behind," Wilson said. "They have tried to pass along that attitude to subsequent generations. As the faculty (of the old campus) retired, they were succeeded by people whom they helped to hire, who moved in and took their place and held onto the same traditions. The same was true of the students – it’s a kind of built-in continuity," he said.

Wilson even says that the current university is a better all-around institution.

"By every measurable standard, Wake Forest is a stronger school. The students have higher test scores; the faculty members have more degrees and produce more books and articles. We have many more athletic teams than we used to have. In 50 years, I’ve seen the campus change and grow stronger step by step," he said.

And Wilson has had a hand in many of these positive changes to the campus. As dean and later as provost, he was influential in establishing the Carswell and Reynolds Scholarship programs, improving the arts departments of the university, beginning the Women’s Studies program, the building of the university’s houses overseas, and the start of endowed professorships.

Yet he is not satisfied. "We need to try to do even better than we are doing," he said. He mentioned encouraging faculty members to publish more works, and creating a classroom atmosphere that would support this step. He also like to continue the university’s policy of need-blind admissions, and continue the quest for a "more diverse and versatile student body." He stressed the importance of good extracurricular and athletic programs.

"I’d like to think that every student who comes to Wake Forest will find here what is most important to that person as a student and as a future graduate," he said. And I’d like to think that every faculty member who comes here to teach will delight in teaching the students and will regard the classroom as a challenge and an opportunity. Also, I would like to think that every student who comes here would find the types of friendship that I found at Wake Forest," Wilson said.

"I really am sold on the idea that there is no place like a college. There is something about the lasting mixture of youth and age that would be very hard to duplicate anywhere else. It’s a constant feeling of things being always old and always new at the same time … the fact is that at heart, what (today’s students) are experiencing is the same thing that I am experiencing. You try to make that experience as meaningful and as happy as possible."