The Journal

Issue date: 4/20/06 Section: LifeStyle

A Webster College promotional photo from the early 1940s offers potential students a "happy balance" in their education. PHOTO COURTESY CLAUDIA BURRIS

It began in 1898, when the Sisters of Loretto, a catholic women's organization, bought the Benjamin Webster estate with the intent to open a college for women. Construction of the Loretto College Building, known now as Webster Hall, was under way in 1915. A year later, Loretto College was open, and the first students - two freshmen and three sophomores - started attending classes.

The Loretto College Building served as classroom space, library and dormitory for not only the students, but also for the sisters that instructed them. According to the 2005 Sum and Substance, Webster University's fact and statistics book, students lived on the second and third floors. The first library, too, was located on the second floor. The Sisters of Loretto lived on the fourth floor.

The Loretto College name didn't stick around for long. Sister Barbara Ann Barbato, professor emeritus, taught at Webster from 1963 to 2001. She said the school took the name "Webster" eight years after it opened, but not necessarily by its own choice.

"(Loretto) College had to change its name because the post office kept getting its mail mixed up with the Loretto Academy down on Lafayette," Barbato said, speaking about what is now Pillar Place, a Loretto project that provides housing for poor families. She said the school took its name from a number of different "Websters."

The city of Webster Groves was named after Daniel Webster, a popular senator, secretary of state and orator in the 1800s. The fact that the school was built on the old property of Benjamin Webster, who wasn't related to the famous senator, solidified the name.

"Webster is really its own thing," Barbato said. "It's always the map department or the post office that get disturbed about names."

In fact, the post office played a role in the name of the city, too.

Webster Groves was originally known as "Webster," until the post office complained that there were too many towns in Missouri with the same name. The towns were asked to differentiate themselves from the other communities, and the "Groves" was added for all of the trees in the area.

Barbato said the school was unique in both its methods and its mission.

"It was the first women's college west of the Mississippi, and that was something important since the very beginning," Barbato said. "From the start, Webster set out to give higher education to people who were not served."

This was a recurring theme throughout Webster's history, Barbato said. It started with the school's desire to provide an education for women.

"The idea of a (women's) college was to provide education for girls that they couldn't otherwise get," Barbato said. "Girls couldn't go to St. Louis University. But it was also so that, as women, they could be leaders in their communities and professions."

Barbato noted that this spirit has endured throughout the years.

"You'll notice the women at Webster are pretty assertive," Barbato said. "Having boys didn't make a difference there."

Webster's Growth

The 1920s and 30s marked times of rapid growth for the college. According to the 1923 to 1924 course catalog, tuition at this time was $50 per 18-week semester, and the cost for on-campus living in Webster Hall was $200. The following year, the school received accreditation. Loretto Hall opened in 1928.

By the 1930 to 1931 catalog, tuition had raised 50 percent - to a whopping $75 a semester. Room and board, "board" being the school's first semblance of a meal plan, was raised to $250.

The 1930s also marked the time the school started its first forays into internationalism - according to Sum and Substance, "from 1930 to 1950, nearly 200 faculty members and students went abroad or came to Webster, primarily from Asia, Europe and
South America."

In 1930, there were 174 students enrolled at Webster College - 59 of whom were from out of state. Students from China, Mexico, Cambodia, India, El Salvador and others were coming to Webster in higher numbers throughout the school's early years.

The 1960s: Big Changes

But some of the biggest transformations for the university came during the 1960s - a period when much of the country was going through its own changes. Tuition in the 1961-1962 school year was $360 per semester.

In 1962, the first male students were enrolled in the school's fine arts program. Barbato said Webster's growing reputation as a fine-arts powerhouse, as well as Webster's relationship with other schools in the region, led men to enroll in that program.

"Webster offered the kinds of courses that women needed to know, some of which were art and music," Barbato said. "There was quite a bit of theater as well. It wasn't an arts and theater school, but they were really good at the arts, and became known for it."

Karen Luebbert, vice president and executive assistant to the president, has worked for Webster since 1966. She said an arrangement with SLU benefitted both schools.

"Students from SLU could come and take fine arts classes because they didn't have a fine arts school," Luebbert said. Luebbert has worked at the university since 1966.

The partnership with SLU started when Webster began putting on theater productions and needed men to fill some of the roles. Male students from SLU were allowed to take theater and arts classes at Webster alongside the women, while earning credit for degrees through their own university.

Barbato said Webster also had this arrangement with other schools.

"There was the same sort of thing with Webster and Fontbonne University, too," Barbato said. "At Fontbonne, their big thing was teaching to the deaf, and so an agreement was made where students in (Webster's) education program could go to Fontbonne and learn that, while getting their degree from Webster."

"It was the kind of thing that happens when colleges really talk to one another," Barbato said. "They were really trying to figure out how to best serve their students."

Drawing students in from other schools brought in bigger talent, and the theater program grew exponentially. The expansion eventually led to the construction of the Loretto-Hilton Center in 1966.

The following year, Webster went through another important change - the Sisters of Loretto transferred ownership of the school to a lay board of directors.

During the 60s, some sisters wanted to branch out into other areas, such as civil rights and teaching to people in the inner-cities. They were in a troubling situation; they needed presidents, professors and others to make up the faculty and administration, but were running out of sisters to fill the jobs.

"There were a lot of (sisters) who didn't want to be deans, or didn't want to be administrators," Barbato said. "So, then you have to hire people (outside the sisterhood)."

As the number of non-nun jobs increased, so did the strain on the school's pocketbook. Sisters up until this point were paid room and board and not much else - and outside help meant catering to bigger salary expectations.

During this time, universities nationwide were also expanding outside of their smaller, specialized roles and into more broad, well-rounded institutions. The government was spending more money on student loans than before, and college enrollments rising. It became apparent that the Sisters of Loretto couldn't maintain control of the university on their own.

In a speech Jan. 11, 1967, Jacqueline Grennan Wexler, then-president of Webster, announced the school's decision and made a statement regarding the school's split from the church.

"It is my personal conviction that the very nature of higher education is opposed to juridical control by the church," Grennan Wexler said. "The academic freedom, which must characterize a college or university, would provide continuing embarrassments for the Church if her hierarchy were forced into endorsing or negating the action of the college or university."

In an interview in the United Church Herald in April, 1967, Grennan Wexler gave some personal insight into the decision.

"Some time ago, I was interviewed by a representative of (an antipoverty agency,)" Grennan Wexler said. "I was asked whether I could vote on such a matter as the distribution of birth control information without having to consult someone in my religious order or the Catholic church.

"The question kept coming back to my mind," Grennan Wexler said. "It was a good example of an issue in the real world, which I did not believe a nun could answer without restrictions."

At the same time, Grennan Wexler renounced her own vows and left the Sisters of Loretto. She explained that her decision to leave the church was not based on any disagreement, but on the premise that she didn't feel she could meet the needs of the Sisters and meet her own personal goals in the public sector. Grennan Wexler married Paul Wexler some time after the dispensation of her vows.

The decision to break the school from the church's control was obviously not without controversy, particularly from the church itself, but the decision was defended by a number of Catholic and secular publications at the time. This included the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which said, "the process seems inevitable" in an editorial Jan. 13, 1967.

Two weeks later, New York Times education editor Fred M. Hechinger said, "none of the universities are in any way moving toward secularization. The move is away from direct church control, without lessening of 'church relatedness.'"

For Webster, this was true for some time. Grennan Wexler remained both a devout Catholic and president of the university after transfer. She described the school's "Christian presence," saying "Webster is a strong liberal arts college with a deep Christian, Catholic religious component. A component is something which enters into a process; the process is not the same without it."

Luebbert said that the decision to transfer ownership might have saved the school.

"The Sisters of Loretto knew that to have Webster survive and prosper, they would need different ownership," Luebbert said. "So at their request, ownership was transferred. Obviously, we did survive, and a number of the institutions that did not have that sort of transfer didn't."

Around this same time, the men who were spending more time on campus taking theater classes at Webster wanted to major in subjects like math and English, Barbato said.

"It didn't make sense that the school could only teach (men) theater," Barbato said. "If you could teach them that, then it must be OK to teach them math."

Barbato said that when men were allowed to enroll in all departments, not many came at first.

"After all, this was a girls school," Barbato said. "But then the Vietnam war happened, and the inner-city needed role models, men in particular, to teach in the schools."

Barbato said this came out of Webster's philosophy to provide education for those that couldn't get it otherwise: both in giving full access to men at Webster, and in training them to be teachers for inner-city children.

"Webster set up a program with the military," Barbato said, "where veterans were returning from Vietnam and transitioning out of the service. They would take college courses that would point them in the direction of teaching in the inner-city grade schools."

The program was known as VAULT, or Veterans' Accelerated Urban Learning for Teaching. And as enrollment in the program grew, so did male enrollment.

"So many veterans came, and then other fellas were not uncomfortable at all with coming to Webster because there were already so many men on campus," Barbato said. "They helped them over the hump."

The 70s and 80s

As a non-denominational, coed university, the last three decades progressed in much the same way that other schools did: changes in curriculums, development of new majors and programs and expanding the campus. What made Webster different was in how it took those ideas and ran with them - all over the world.

In the early 1970s, Webster expanded its campus in a number of ways. The university established its first military campus in 1974, just north of Chicago, at Fort Sheridan. This same year, a downtown St. Louis campus opened.

In 1978, the first European campus opened in Geneva, Switzerland. Campuses in Vienna, Austria and Leiden, The Netherlands, opened in 1981 and 1983, respectively. In 1986, a campus opened in London.

But things were expanding on the home campus as well. In 1987, the university bought the Pearson House, and the Sverdrup Business and Technology Complex opened a year later. In 1991, the Visual Arts Building was added, and in 1992, the University Center.

But what might be most interesting was the new approach Webster took to education as a whole, starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Barbato said the decision to transfer ownership of the school wasn't nearly as contentious as the new degree requirements - or lack thereof.

"About the same time (as the transfer to a lay board) Webster was doing things like doing away with degree requirements altogether," Barbato said. "We were doing a lot of studies in learning, and the theory of learning. It was a matter of great discussion by faculty, staff and even the news media."

Webster had always been a little bit different. Throughout the 1960s, students were often given college credit for taking a semester off to work on political campaigns or do community service. But the idea of dropping almost all required courses and allowing students to choose their own courses completely was a significant departure from common wisdom.

The 1971-1972 course catalog, titled "Sight and Sound, Etc.," came packaged with a small record. Under the heading "Philosophy," it says that "Webster College is an open, 'etcetera' kind of place. There are no general degree requirements, no predetermined course packages deemed best for all students, no preconceived notions of what all students need to be 'liberally' educated."

It continues, "Each Webster student chooses the components of his educational experience and accepts the consequences… good or bad."

"It was pretty unheard of at the time," Barbato said.

In 1983, Webster College officially renamed itself Webster University, to better reflect the scope and character of the school.
Webster's Future

The past 20 years have been years of rapid expansion for
Webster. Be it the development of the local campus with the addition of the new buildings at home, or the addition of numerous overseas campuses, the university has grown in leaps and bounds.

Signs of immediate expansion in the near future are already visible on campus: the Community Music School and Webster Village Apartments on Garden Avenue are both expected to open this fall. Plans for a new business and technology building, as well as a new science building are also on the university's drawing board. As Webster continues to grow and expand, so to will its rich history. With any luck, the next 90 years will be as exciting as the last.

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