Executive Director Phil Geier presents the 2006 “Davis Cup” to Westminster College President Fletcher Lamkin. The award is given annually to the school with the largest number of entering scholars.

“Davis Cup” Honor Goes to Westminster College
Internationalizing Aids Recruitment: “I’m Coming Because of That”

Profound changes are unfolding at a small Missouri college that has set itself to developing an international campus community. Last fall, students from 55 non-U.S. nations made up 12 percent of Westminster College’s 950-member student body — and the school was awarded the annual Davis Cup for enrolling the largest first-year class of Scholars in the nation, with 28 (another nine arrived in the second semester).

On a campus where 60 percent of the U.S. students are from Missouri, the internationalizing of Westminster is stirring in-depth conversations. In a recent essay, Philosophy Professor Richard Geenen said when one of his classes discussed whether societies are obliged to give humanitarian assistance if they can, an American student was skeptical — until Davis UWC Scholar Nenad Stamatovic (Croatia, Mahindra UWC) recounted his experiences doing relief work in Malaysia after the 2004 tsunami.

“Nenad ... ended by saying, ‘I really do think we were able to make a difference,’” Prof. Geenen writes. “The class’s respectful silence suggested a fitting tacit consent.

“Such impacts are being felt ever more readily throughout the campus,” Geenen observes. But, he adds, the “inevitable challenges” of such a changing student population have led to some tensions. Those prompted a standing-room turnout of students, faculty, and staff at a recent “Philosopher’s Corner” panel discussion on international and U.S. student relations.

“There was an enormous amount of good will in the room ... enough to impress even an old cynic like me,” Geenen quotes Prof. Dave Collins, one of the panelists, as saying afterward.

Many at the forum supported expanding “Take a Friend Home,” a unique travel-abroad program that Westminster piloted last summer. Eight Westminster students — four from the U.S. and four international Davis UWC Scholars — were paired up: each pair spent the summer in the international student’s home country, mostly with his or her family. The college hopes to send up to 10 pairs of students on similar experiences this summer.

Along with the impacts that its globalization is having on individual students, and on the campus as a whole, the college also is seeing a strong, positive effect on its recruitment of American students.

“Because we’re emphasizing the global community piece, and we’re making that very clear and explicit in our marketing, we’re getting more and more students who say, ‘I’m coming because of that,’” says Dr. George Forsythe, Senior Vice President and Academic Dean.