Longtime English Faculty Has Only Ever Wanted to Teach at ECC

Since the 1990s, Rachael Stewart has been a fixture in Elgin Community College’s (ECC) English department. As a present to herself for her 30th birthday, Stewart decided to take creative writing classes at ECC. 

After taking classes at ECC for a year, the director of the Writers' Center at the time, Larry Taylor, recruited her to volunteer. Stewart worked alongside Taylor for years and helped coordinate the Reading Series. 

“We’ve always done the reading series, and we’ve always had an open mic opportunity for people,” Stewart said. “They’ve been called different things, but that's still the basic function of them.”

She would later become director of the Writers’ Center in 1993 and remained there for years. Two years ago, in 2024, she stepped down. English Professor Joshua Thusat is now the Writers' Center Director. 

Stewart became an adjunct professor in 1992 and was hired full-time in 1994. She finished her bachelor’s degree at Vermont College and completed her master’s degree at Bennington College. 

“This is the only place I ever wanted to teach,” she said about ECC. “I love this place so much.”

Stewart said that she’s taught every class in the English department but has focused on creative writing and advanced literature courses. In her first year of teaching, she taught composition and creative writing. 

She has also enjoyed teaching composition courses because “You’re working with students where writing isn’t second nature to them, and they can struggle, but it's rewarding when you help a student find their voice.”

Subjects she enjoys most include social themes and larger world concerns. Stewart will retire at the end of spring 2027. But she jokes, “I sometimes think they’re going to have to carry me out in a box.”

In 2025, Stewart was diagnosed with cancer, and since then has been teaching just one class a semester. She said she believes that continuing to teach is one of the reasons she’s doing as well as she is amidst her health battle. 

“Teaching is my lifeline,” she said. “Teaching makes me feel alive and connected and positive, and it just makes me happy to be in the classroom.”

Currently, Stewart has been teaching Intro to Poetry each semester, her favorite, she said. She enjoys the student presentations at the end of class where they teach the class about a specific poem. 

“It's a way of seeing what they learned over the course of the semester, what stands out to them, and what has really impacted them,” she said. “I love being able to see that and what they’ve learned, and I love watching them teach it to other people.”