The Journal

Media Credit: Theo Welling Bruce Umbaugh, director of the Global Citizenship Project Task Force and professor in the philosophy department, gives a presentation about the progress the task force has made at a faculty assembly meeting Nov. 10.

The Global Citizenship Project Task Force, established to propose a new general education program for Webster University, is in the process of answering some important questions. Questions such as, "What is a global citizen, anyway."

While some faculty members have raised concerns about the name of the task force, those involved in the process say the more important questions deal with what WU wants students to learn and what skills they should have upon graduation.

"If you know your result, you are much better guided in your actions and planning," said Paula Hanssen, assistant professor in the international languages and cultures department and coordinator of German studies.

The task force has not yet produced any details or proposals. At the faculty assembly meeting Nov. 10, Bruce Umbaugh, director of the task force and professor in the philosophy department, presented four broad guidelines of teaching outcomes that WU should strive to address in its general education program.

According to the guideline, WU's new general education program should teach students:

• Knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world


• intellectual and practical skills


• understanding of personal and social responsibility


• the ability to integrate and apply what is learned

If those guidelines seem vague, it's because, at this stage, they are supposed to be, said Kit Jenkins, professor in the communications and journalism department and a task force member.

"We have barely begun," Jenkins said. "What does it mean to be a global citizen? It might mean something to you that's different than me."

Jenkins said the next step for the task force is to define the terms and have more debates.

"I understand that words and titles set an agenda but I'm not focused on that for the task force," Jenkins said. "I'm focused on 'what are these outcomes really going to be' and 'what do we really think our students need to know to be prepared.' And that is going to be a much more complicated, challenging and substantive argument."

At the faculty assembly meeting Nov. 10, several faculty members expressed concerns about the choice of global citizenship for the name of the new program.

"Among the faculty who object to using the language of global citizenship, different people have very different reasons," Umbaugh said. "Some people have been very vocal about that. One of the things the Faculty Senate did very well, in committing so much time at the assembly meeting to this subject, was helping us understand how many or how few faculty object to that language."

A motion to change the name of the general education program introduced at the faculty assembly meeting was opposed overwhelmingly, with only 19 faculty members voting for a change.

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