Awarded September 29, 2023
2023 Distinguished Service Citation

Jessica Fox-Wilson has been a passionate member of the Beloit community since she graduated from the college in 1998. A beloved student mentor since returning to the college as director of career services more than a decade ago, her practical and approachable guidance and genuine connections with students have earned deep respect and trust.

During her student years, the creative writing and education major was resident assistant, a member and resident of the Womyn’s Center (now Feminist Collective), and co-created Syzygy, a pop-up poetry performance troupe. She enjoyed the educational setting of her various jobs in admissions, program development, and student affairs and earned her master of fine arts in creative writing from Hamline University. She later returned to her alma mater, first as a residential life coordinator and later as career services director. While the office’s name and operations changed over the past decade, Jessica steadily expanded its offerings, resources, and peer mentors.

As Career Works director, she gets to know students and their interests to help them prepare for their lives beyond Beloit, assisting them with majors and career exploration, internships, community outreach, resume and mock interviews, and graduate school and job applications. “Jessica connects with students in a deep way by meeting them where they are and pointing them in the direction they want to go,” says sociology professor and 2023’s Underkofler recipient Kate Linnenberg. “She is knowledgeable about what alumni are up to and is able to put our students into contact with people who can help them on their path.” She also helped create the Career Accelerator in 2021, a winter break program that involves students in planning for their careers and meeting alumni and future mentors.

Jessica juggles her campus roles with community service, as Beloit College’s former representative at the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce board and current representative with the Downtown Beloit Association, as a volunteer in the mock interview program at Beloit Memorial High School, and with Beloit’s chapter of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. She keeps up with many of her mentees well past their Beloit years. One of them, Nadir Carlson’16, participated in a Career Accelerator panel earlier this year and expressed gratitude for his mentor’s recognition. “She’s impacted people in ways that I don’t think they always realize because she does stuff behind the scenes and doesn’t toot her own horn,” he said.

For her many contributions, the Alumni Association honors Jessica Fox-Wilson with the 2023 Distinguished Service Citation Award.