Clint Wright hadn’t even moved to Virginia when he started at Longwood in 2009.
“I can’t say that I had finished school, but I had decided that I was done with my undergrad experience and was looking for a job. My wife was eight months pregnant. And I didn’t really have a plan,” he said.
A friend Wright had worked with the previous summer offered him a job as the technical director for the theatre program.
“The first time I was here was in October, I was here for a week. We built the set for Eurydice. Then I flew back to Nebraska and I came back for a week in November and we struck Eurydice. Then I flew back to Nebraska again.”
Wright laughs as he recounts the circumstances of his eventual arrival in Virginia, “We officially rolled up to our house Dec. 31 2009, and by the time we got all moved in it was Jan. 1, 2010. I didn’t know my way around Farmville at the time, so instead of having champagne and nice food on New Year’s Eve, we had really crappily prepared Papa Johns and Miller High Life: The champagne of beers!”
For his first two years’ tenure at Longwood, Wright was the technical director of the theatre department and worked with productions like the main stages and underground productions. He worked with the AV services at Jarman Hall for five years, eventually becoming an adviser for Alpha Si Omega.
“The production stuff was great and I loved doing all of that. But then I was also doing a lot of computer setups and things like that. There was so much tedium that the fun parts of the job weren’t fun.”
Prior to moving to Jarman, Wright was consulted along with Professor Jeff Halliday and Dr. Ryan Stouffer on plans to build what would become French Hall.
Wright's love of working with students is also why he loves being staff versus a professor.
“There are some aspects that if you want to get it done, you have to work with me. But for the large majority of students, they work with me because they want to, not because they have to.”
While discussing how he came to be in his current position, Wright mentioned that Halliday and Stouffer sought him out specifically for his position, “That kind of support is not something you see very often.”
“I can’t say that I’ll never be anywhere else, but it would have to be a hell of an offer for me to leave Longwood, for me to leave the people I’m working with, the students that I’m working with. There are other universities in Virginia that have our equipment, but there are no other universities, that I am aware of that let the general population use that equipment to benefit themselves. Longwood is an excellent growth community. Personal, professional, Longwood is growth.”
Clint Wright said it would take a lot for him to leave Longwood.
