Engaged Students

Students have everything at their fingertips at Westminster and they use it to their fullest capabilities to experience everything they can…

• International students make up 15 percent of the student body, and all students are encouraged to study abroad. England is a particularly popular destination for Westminster students, though students can also choose from a list of more than 150 approved study-abroad programs in more than forty countries around the world.

• With the help of the career services office, many Westminster students undertake internships during their undergraduate years. Each semester, about a dozen students intern in Washington, DC. Students have also interned with legislators and other public officials in Missouri’s state capital, Jefferson City. As one Westminster student, a genetic research intern at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, noted, “This internship allowed me to integrate more possibilities into the path I might take after I graduate.”

• Students can also gain hands-on experience through their extracurricular activities. Westminster’s student-run investment club, the Blue Blazer Club, did so well with their initial investments that the college’s board of trustees provided them with two hundred thousand dollars in seed money. Their returns have funded trips for the group’s members to New York City.

Great Teaching

There is an emphasis on great teaching at Westminster – students get personalized attention and quality time with professors...

• Westminster students will tell you they learn more from their classes than just what can be found in lecture materials and textbooks. Professors work hard to make sure their students have a thorough grasp of the material, not just the facts they need to pass a final exam. Faculty teach, advise, and mentor in a personal context.

• Westminster offers majors in thirty-six different subject areas, as well as thirty-four minors and twelve pre-professional programs. The college makes it possible for students to design their own majors, and some recent student-designed majors have included advertising, communication, public administration, and sports management. Many students select course work leading to medical school, law school, and doctoral programs.

• Westminster’s freshmen seminars, with such titles as “Extreme Exploration” and “Want to Be a President?” provide an opportunity for students to get to know their professors on a personal basis. In these seminars, professors not only teach the subject matter of the course, but important skills, too, such as research options, how to navigate the library system, and personal time management.

• The life sciences at Westminster have been greatly enhanced with the addition of the eighteen million dollar Coulter Science Center, featuring biology classrooms, laboratories, research facilities for students and faculty, and new faculty offices.

Vibrant Community

Westminster is a residential campus where students form life-long bonds and strong friendships...

• Community service is another important component of life at Westminster. During a recent Into the Streets event, 150 Westminster students cleaned a soup kitchen and a Head Start facility, tended a garden for a domestic violence center, painted park benches, and winterized homes for senior citizens. Students are currently organizing fundraising for China’s earthquake/tsunami disaster, and past summer retreats took a group to New Orleans, where they did residential construction work, helped with cleanup efforts, and passed out food. United Way fund-raising drives are active at Westminster, and the campus schedules regular American Red Cross blood-donation drives. Westminster’s international organizations have recently focused their efforts on promoting the use of sustainable products from other countries.

• First-year students enjoy suite-style living, and all freshmen sharing a suite take one of the freshman seminars; this tends to create a group of friends with common interests and a healthy support system. Male students further along in their Westminster careers also have the option of living in fraternity houses.

• Though Fulton, Missouri, has just 13,000 residents, it is big enough to offer an eight-screen movie-theatre complex, a new Fulton recreation complex, a new YMCA, a large historic district with beautiful Victorian houses, and many international restaurants.

• Westminster College is remembered as the site for Winston Churchill’s famous 1946 speech in which he first described the iron curtain falling across the face of Europe. Today’s campus features the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the U.S.; a sculpture made of eight sections of the Berlin Wall, created by Churchill’s granddaughter and dedicated by Ronald Reagan; and a museum in a sixteenth-century English church, bombed during World War II, dismantled, and reassembled at Westminster in 1967.

• Westminster supports excellent varsity athletic programs, including a tradition of fine soccer teams and several Division III conference football champions.

Successful Outcomes

We’ll not only help develop the way in which you’ll become a leader in life, but in what you’ll choose to become a leader. Success during and after your attendance at Westminster, will ultimately be the measuring stick by which you’ll be judged, and by how you’ll judge us. Whether it’s real-world experience you need, critical skills and contacts to find the perfect job or the academic credentials to begin graduate study, you’ll find it here.

• Most of our students participate in an internship at some point in their collegiate career. This real-world experience is necessary these days to prepare for a career and gain insight into career interests. Our Office of Career Services has extensive lists, resources of internship opportunities and contacts available to you, while our Internship Coordinator will oversee and guide your search.

• About twenty-five percent of our alumni go straight to graduate or professional schools after graduation. Education beyond your undergraduate degree is a necessity in some fields and an advantage in others. Our Office of Career Services will provide you information on applying to graduate schools and guides on studying for admissions tests.

• Approximately 94 percent of our May graduates secure full-time jobs or admission to graduate or professional programs by December. Several Fortune 500 companies and high-powered government offices have hired students from Westminster. Our Office of Career Services will help you locate job openings and perfect your job-searching skills, while our Alumni Office can locate alumni to help you get a job after graduation or help you network in your chosen field.

• No matter what stage of professional development you’re in, we have services tailored to your needs. Personalized attention, guidance and support characterize the career services we offer. All students who have taken advantage of our unique approach can attribute their success at some point to the help they received at Westminster College. It is Individualized and Intentional – we want you to succeed.