Adrian College is grateful to have such great staff and faculty. Recognition is definitely deserved for many of them, however, there is one in particular that is to be centered on. Professor Mesaros-Winckles is a Professor who currently works here in the Communications Department. She received her education for her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication at Spring Arbor University, with concentrations in advertising/PR and journalism. Winckles is a hard working woman as she went on to Bowling Green University where she earned her Doctorate Degree in Communication studies as well as a graduate certificate in women’s studies.
For the last seven years she has been employed here at AC. When she started she was an assistant professor in Communication Arts and Sciences. Over the years she gained a lot of experience and knowledge within the program and currently is an associate professor. Professor Winckles is indeed married to her husband Andrew Winckles with whom they have three kids, six cats, and a tank of fish. Her oldest, Gold’Ann, is actually a dual-enrolled student here at Adrian College which makes it fun for her. William is her fifteen year old son who is very athletic and involved in many sports. He is on the Adrian High School football team, manager of the wrestling team, and is now on the track team doing the 100 meter and pole vault.
Harvey is her 19 months old who she stated is into full-blown toddler mode. She said he is currently “either adorable or screaming…it varies by the minute.” Being a mother of a younger child is a lot to handle on its own, but she does it with everything else that she has going on. I asked Professor Winckles what her average day looked like and she gave me the following:
- Up by 6am and responding to emails by 7am
- Her husband Andrew takes their two older children to school while she heads to the office anywhere from 8am to 8:30
- Their youngest, Harvey, goes to Rad Raptor Comics with her husband Andrew
- Depending on the day, she’s either teaching from 7:45 until about 4 with a two hour break to do grading and lesson prep
Or holding office hours and grading and doing lesson prep…basically a lot of grading and lesson prep for the next class period
- She tries to be out of the office by around 4 pm to help shuffle the kids around to after school activities
- Then pick up Harvey from the shop
- Her and her husband switch off who cooks dinner which she finds nice so she doesn’t have to worry about cooking on her busiest days
- After her and her family have dinner they relax in front of the tv and watch whatever’s out on streaming (they have a LOT of streaming subscriptions- CBS, Peacock, Hulu, Netflix, Apple)
- Dr. Winckles states that she is indeed not a night owl and is usually headed to bed by 9pm
While at Spring Arbor she received her Masters while focusing on professional writing. Professor Winckles was the editor of the college newspaper and then worked as a journalist for a year after finishing her undergraduate degree. This helped her kick start her journey with writing and where she is now with her book. She has done freelance writing for magazines and now mostly publishes academic articles or book chapters.
Next semester she will be taking sabbatical as she plans on working to finish the current book she is writing. The book is a rhetorical history book on nineteenth century women evangelists in the Free Methodist Church. The story is about some awesome women who haven’t gotten the credit they should. She has a website, www.freemethodistfeminist.com , where her stories have been/are being published as well as some short articles on a few of the women.
I asked Professor Winckles what exactly inspired her to write the book and her reply was as follows:
“I grew up in the Free Methodist Church and I realized in graduate school that the denomination had a really fascinating history. Benjamin Titus Roberts, considered the denomination’s founder, published Ordaining Women in 1981. It’s considered one of the earliest manifestos on gender equality in the church, society and the home. He wanted to see women ordained but faced opposition from other denominational leaders at the 1890 and 1894 Free Methodist General Conferences so that didn’t happen. However the denomination has an amazing archive so I have speeches from those conferences and denominational publications that feature women writing in ministry reports. Women weren’t ordained in the denomination until 1974 but that didn’t stop them from serving as licensed evangelists even though they couldn’t be ordained as elders (only elders could serve communion, marry and baptize). They were essentially doing the same job as men but didn’t receive the same credit and weren’t included in denominational histories. It’s common for that to happen so there is an entire generation of scholars working to uncover these stories and write these women back into various organizational histories.”
Professor Winckles is very excited about her efforts with this book and it is planned to have the manuscript due to the press by December 2022 by Fortress Academic.
The College World 