People who have been to the Proctor website know about Chuck’s Corner.  What they don’t know is how this nationally recognized section of the Proctor website got started.  About ten years ago, Proctor started to work with a new internet service provider, Whipple Hill, mainly because the founder was a graduate of Proctor.  He wanted to use Proctor as a test for a “self managed website.”  

  After having the school’s website up for about a year, Director of Communications Chuck Will asked the tech department if he could upload a “photo of the day” with a caption on the website.  Due to some minor technical issues, Chuck needed to send the photos and captions to the tech dept. in order to get them on the site.  Only four pictures were put up every day and they were small due to the fact that it took so long to upload.  In order to find these pictures, a viewer would need to navigate through the alumni pages.  Chuck was well aware that this section would be visited by a lot of people and decided to take a risky approach by writing captions that emphasized “how crazy it was to be working with teenagers.”

The results were surprising, and the site got visitors who knew nothing about Proctor.   According to Chuck, at one point early on there were over 30,000 unique visitors to the page.  Soon after, the school made Chuck’s Corner the front page of the school’s website.  For the next few years it stayed there, but the site confused some people trying to apply to Proctor and was moved to a section linked to the front page.  That is how Chuck’s Corner was started.

Chuck has been at Proctor for over thirty years.  He joined as an unpaid intern in the history department and moved

up the ranks to become the Director of Admissions, and now he’s the Director of Communications.  As the author of Chuck’s Corner, Chuck speaks at conferences and gets comments and questions about Chuck’s Corner from all over the world. 

Imperfection is a major attraction to the “Corner.”  Many schools have pictures of what makes their school perfect.  Proctor has a page that is updated 2-3 times a week with photos and captions that are risky, and the real view of the school attracts people to the site and the school.

Another thing about Chuck and his “Corner” is that he is Proctor’s historian; he knows about most everything in Proctor’s history.  To build on that, Chuck's Corner is like a ten year old electronic notebook that gets bigger and bigger.  I searched up Cary house, an old dorm that burned down Chuck’s first year here, in the late 80s, and found a dedication to the dorm.   

Chuck has experienced a lot, and will continue to impress and entertain the world as well as the lucky students of Proctor.