Photo by Clare Osborn
TORIN O’BRIEN
Special to The Leader
Last week was a good one for writers at Fredonia as the first part of the Writers@Work series kicked off with Randy Cronk. Cronk spent the better part of three days here, speaking to classes, giving lectures and sharing his knowledge with whoever wanted to listen.
Along with being a Class of 1972 Fredonia alumnus, Cronk has 30 years experience as a business writer. After serving as public relations director for two hospitals and working as a tech writer for Digital Equipment Corporation, Cronk started his own business: greatwriting, LLC, out of Boston. His company has been helping technology based businesses bolster their content writing since 1990.
“We help computer companies, software companies, networking companies, companies that are in cyber security [and], in general, companies that sell technology solutions to other businesses,” said Cronk. “These companies don’t make impulse purchases. These are deals that sometimes take place over the course of a year or more. Communication for these deals is paramount, and that’s where we come in. When I can take a half-hour explanation, and give it back to the customer, coherently, in three sentences, I think that’s pretty cool.”
As a former English major, Cronk has shown that a humanities degree can sell in the real world — specifically a humanities degree from Fredonia. His business, along with his website, greatwriting.com, has kept him busy for the better part of three decades.
“The whole thing excites me,” Cronk said with a chuckle. “I’m just happy to be here, you know, this experience; I’m enjoying it. I love college. I love being with the students, the faculty. I love interacting.”
And there was plenty of interacting last week, as Cronk sat in on several classes, workshops and panels. The events kicked off on Wednesday night with Making Good Writing Great: A Student Workshop. At Cronk’s first event, students who submitted work prior to the meeting had the opportunity to have their work reviewed and critiqued by Cronk himself.
A room full of students got the chance to look over each piece of submitted writing individually, with Cronk at the front of the room, poking and prodding the shy attendees for some peer feedback to go along with his own.
Cronk spent Thursday speaking in various classes, including Writing for the Professions, Rhetoric for Writers, Writing for Digital Media and the English major Senior Seminar.
Katherine Szwejbka, a graduate assistant in the English Department, has been working for two semesters to make Writers@Work a reality.
“This is something we’re really excited about continuing over the next couple of semesters,” said Szwejbka, who wrote the initial grant proposal for the Writers@Work series. “We’re responsible for creating promotional material, getting in touch with the alumni, and discussing who would be a good fit for the series. We have so many alumni who can bring many diverse skills and experiences to the program. Sometimes that makes it hard to choose, because we have so many willing candidates.”
Naomi Lynch, another graduate assistant, saw the fruits of their labor as Cronk, their first guest in the series, was a smash hit.
“You know, this isn’t so much about the feedback. There are already outlets on campus for that. We had a specific goal for Writers@Work, and that was to show our students that success is a very real possibility,” Lynch said. “Fredonia has so many great alumni, but there’s a generational divide. We’re filling that, and in the process we’re showing that, yeah, we might be a very small campus when compared nationally, or even in the SUNY system, but we do have alumni out there making a difference.”
Natalie Gerber, associate chair of the English Department, had nothing but praise for her two student organizers.
“This series has given these two the opportunity to develop an e-portfolio and put some of their skills to use. On behalf of the department, we have been wowed by the professional quality of their communication, their design skills and their social media savvy,” she said. “We were grateful to have some of these skills harnessed for the English Department through these two.”
Anyone who had the chance to listen to Cronk in that three day span will most likely have learned something new. The series’ and Cronk’s message, that writing is a mandatory skill needed in today’s professional workplace, is ringing in the ears of attendees this week and going forward.