Wabash College Bachelor

When I arrived at Wabash as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1998, I was so impressed by the long-serving faculty in my department and across the College. I joined the chemistry faculty with John Zimmerman H’67 and David Phillips H’83, who had been teaching at Wabash for 35 and 30 years, respectively. Rich Dallinger, who was a tenured full professor and our department chair, was the “junior” member of the department.

One of the defining strengths of a Wabash education is that it extends far beyond the classroom. Wabash men are shaped not only by what they study, but also by who invests in them. The College is defined by its culture of mentorship. Faculty, staff, coaches, and alumni form a quiet but powerful network of mentors who guide, challenge, and balance students during some of the most formative (and hardest) years of their lives.

The skill I’m most thankful for comes in two parts: First, there is an answer to my questions somewhere out there, and second, the perseverance and determination to keep looking until I find the answer. (This was long before the internet and Google.) For example, one time at work I was faced with a chart of data that looked like a shotgun blast, and I needed to find a straight line that best represented the data.

“John and I drove over to Ancona, caught the ship, and went to Greece,” Associate German Professor Gregory Redding ’88 recalls of a postgraduation journey with John Fischer H’70, his Wabash mentor. “He made you feel like a co-intellectual. We would be on a tour with John, traveling around the Roman Forum, and he’d be resurrecting these walls and bringing them back to life. You’d look around and suddenly realize he’s like the Pied Piper.

I was assigned Professor John Zimmerman H’67 as my advisor. He was always there for good advice and encouragement, even when he was running around taking pictures and videos of everything from chemistry labs to sporting events. I was even lucky enough to have him for chemistry on my oral comps board! Another mentor was the legendary equipment manager Chick Clements H’77. As a student manager for football, basketball, and baseball, I spent a tremendous amount of time around Chick.

Who was your greatest mentor at Wabash? Or share a memorable moment with a professor, coach, or staff member. My journey to become an award-winning author and screenwriter began while I attended Wabash. As an English major, many of my classes were with Walter L. Fertig W1938, an associate professor of English. After reading two stories that were published in a Wabash literary magazine, he encouraged me to continue my writing. Professor Fertig was my mentor and friend.

Athletics and Recreation Communication Director Brent Harris H’03 has been keeping statistics and telling the stories of Wabash Athletics since 1999. The Crawfordsville native has worked in radio, newspaper, and television, including as a freelance technician with ESPN. Beyond Wabash, Harris has spent 31 seasons working with the Indianapolis Colts and the NFL and is a regular fixture on stat crews and game operations at Lucas Oil Stadium, including NCAA football and basketball tournaments.

Faculty mentoring at Wabash College has not always been a formal process, but generations of its outstanding teachers have learned pedagogical, cultural, and social norms from each other and passed them along. The Classics department celebrates and reflects on the influence of one enormous personality and respected mentor lost last fall. John Fischer H’70 began teaching at Wabash in 1964. Fischer, who taught for 40 years in the Classics Department, passed away on August 5, 2025.

When professor of political science Emeritus Melissa Butler H’85 interviewed for a faculty position at Wabash College in 1976, she wasn’t sure whether the College was still all-male. The college catalog she consulted at the Library of Congress was out-of-date, and many men’s colleges had gone coeducational in the years since it was published. “Four of my classmates at Johns Hopkins were from Wabash College and they were all guys.

Ms. Pendleton’s kindergarten class sits in pairs around their math bins, counting toy cars, building with wooden blocks. “Look, Ms. Pendleton, I made a keyboard!” a little girl announces. “Like Mr. Dane’s?” teacher Jene Anne Pendleton asks. The student nods with a grin and returns to her project. “Mr. Dane” is Dane Market ’26, a music major and education studies minor who visits the Hose Elementary classroom three days per week.