Profile: Christopher Stetson Wilson
Christopher Stetson Wilson is the administrative associate to the chair in the Department of Journalism. As the department’s only administrator, he assists the chair in managing many of the department’s operations, which support approximately 40 faculty and 500 students.
He helps oversee the department’s operating budget and spending, including creating quarterly spending projections. He administers all operating budget expenditures—everything from pencils and postage up to the robust software that runs the Journalism studios. He also helps faculty process their reimbursable charges.
Wilson manages the department’s student ID and badge program, which distributes 100+ new IDs and 400+ safety and technology badges every year. The IDs identify students as student journalists while on assignment in public, while the badges, which are affixed to the back side of the IDs, identify completed training in cross-curricular skills and safety procedures. He also maintains the faculty’s fleet of MacBooks.
Another of his main responsibilities is to hire and onboard approximately 10 student workers every year; he directly supervises the 3 to 6 who work at the front desk. He oversees the students’ outreach to Journalism alumni and maintains a database of nearly 3,000 alumni. He also supervises the students who post to the department’s social media accounts, and he edits a weekly student newsletter called The Beet.
The department hosts a few guest speakers every year, and Wilson helps with the events’ outreach, logistics, and marketing efforts. In normal times, the department also hosts State Department-led delegations of journalists from all over the world, for panel discussions with faculty and meetings with students. Also in normal times, Wilson coordinates an annual off-campus student journalism awards ceremony.
Lastly, Wilson acts as a general fount of information, answering and triaging all kinds of questions from Journalism faculty and students, other administrative associates across campus, and prospective students and parents.
This past spring, Wilson celebrated his three-year anniversary at Emerson, which happens to be his longest stint at a job. Prior to Emerson, he worked at Northeastern, Harvard, and Suffolk universities, as well as a hotel company, seven different independent coffee shops, and even a doggie date service (“best job ever, but also the smelliest,” he noted).
He said that what he enjoys most about working here is the people. “We have so many conscientious, driven people at this institution….The students at Emerson are incredible. It means a lot that my own work supports what they’re trying to do,” he explained. He also appreciates being a part of the Emerson Staff Union and values the support that members offer each other.
Someday, Wilson himself will be an Emerson alumnus—hopefully by the end of 2024. He’s a current student in the MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) program. He has a BA in economics from Oberlin College and grew up in Lakeland, Florida. He currently lives in Cambridge near Central Square with two roommates.
Outside of work, Wilson DJs techno under the name Minnow; pre-pandemic, he organized techno nights with a crew called Cake Factory. He spends his weekends birding with his girlfriend, seeking out fine cocktails and coffee, fishing for freshwater bass, and playing more Smash Ultimate than he cares to admit. He is also a senior reader for Emerson’s literary journal Redivider, and he writes his own short stories and tries to get them published. As he succinctly put it, “I am never bored!”
Nancy Howell (Communications and Marketing)