Faculty Profile Ross Wheeler

Ross Wheeler with Sarah Wu, a former freshman honors program student who is now going for a graduate degree at QC.

Writing a Narrative That Leads to Student Honors

When Ross Wheeler was earning his MFA in fiction at the renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he had no idea that one day he would head a college honors office. After receiving his master’s degree, the Idaho native remained at the University of Iowa for three years, where he gained his first experience helping students through a job at the academic advising center. “I loved my work, but knew I wanted to get a PhD in English literature,” says Wheeler, who went on to specialize in socially conscious authors of the 1930s such as John Steinbeck and John Dos Passos.

Wheeler calls on that background as director of the Honors Office and Macaulay Honors College at QC.

“Fiction writers learn how to analyze characters and situations through narrative,” he points out. “It’s the same for students applying for awards—they have to express their thoughts clearly in an analytic essay, describing their goals and personal development and the relationships and connections over time that have influenced them.”

Advising students on their award essays and applications brings Wheeler much satisfaction—and students are the beneficiaries of his leadership and expertise. Since his arrival at QC in 2003 from Long Island University’s honors program, Wheeler has led successful application processes for major national awards from the Beinecke Scholarship Program, National Science Foundation, Goldwater Scholarship Program, and Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship. So many QC students have received Fulbright Fellowships, one of academia’s most prestigious awards—12 in the last three years alone—that the college has been designated a “Top Producer of Fulbright U.S. Students.”

“Students are interesting people with intellectually complex ideas,” Wheeler says. “It’s exciting and a real privilege to help them establish priorities and goals.” Personal coaching, he says, helps them turn a passion into a focused academic and career plan. Besides receiving assistance with their written personal statements, students applying for awards can also participate in mock interviews. “Students need mentoring to win major awards,” he says, “and we provide that.”

Under Wheeler’s leadership, the Freshman Honors program was launched and an internal process for distributing scholarship funds from the Queens College Foundation was formalized. In 2008 he became academic and administrative director of the Macaulay Honors College, a major expansion of his responsibilities.

The wide range of students at QC keeps the job especially interesting. “We’ve had older transfer students and many first-generation college students apply for scholarships, and win,” he says. One outstanding example is Jamar Whaley, a former high school dropout in his thirties who received an NSF award and Goldwater Scholarship. He also received a Fulbright, among the most prestigious awards in academia. As the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, this award enabled Whaley to conduct clinical research in China on Internet addiction.

More recently, Moya Bedward from the island of Jamaica received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research on North African history in Morocco. She is currently enrolled in a PhD program at Rutgers University. And for Priya Surya, her Fulbright to study the effect of micro-finance loans to women in Turkey helped her gain entry to the renowned Harvard Kennedy School.

Wheeler spoke with warmth and pride about these awardees and the scores of other successful students mentored over the years. But he is most proud of the “really good team of people” in his office, and the collaborative relationships that Honors has developed campus-wide. Working closely with QC’s four academic divisions, the Study Abroad program, and various college networks, Wheeler and colleagues help ensure that QC students know how often opportunity comes knocking for them, and that opening the door to the Honors Office can lead to a brilliant future.