Robert Spencer, director general, European campuses, Webster University

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - When Robert Spencer moved to Geneva in 1995 to take on the job of president of the Geneva campus of Webster University, the school considered itself international, with students who represented 75 nationalities. But two-thirds of them came from Geneva and the student body of 300 to 350 students lived off-campus; there was little sense of community and businesses in the area often had no clear picture of what kind of education the school offered.

In the 13 years that Spencer has been at Webster, the university has changed significantly. It celebrates its 30th birthday this week, and the spotlight falls on an institution that has grown into a new role: a serious player in post-secondary education in Switzerland, a good alternative to state universities.

Spencer himself is now director general for the European campuses of the American university whose home base is St Louis, Missouri with his office in Geneva.

“We’ve really evolved,” he says enthusiastically from the warmth of his wood-trimmed room in an old villa at the top of a hill overlooking the verdant campus. The window frames perennially snowy Mont Blanc. “The demographics are changing, with more and more students coming from abroad. Last year we had 97 nationalities.” And the ratio is inverted: now two-thirds of the students come from outside Switzerland.

For Spencer, looking back, there is no one moment that stands out as marking the development into a small yet widely respected option for university studies in Geneva. “It’s not so much a single event as there’s a continuing satisfaction. Two things continue to be remarkable, for me, every day when I come to work: the view of Mont Blanc from my window! And the diversity of our students. We had 640 students last year, with no one dominant culture, and even of the Swiss we have, one-third of them didn’t start out that way. I see how much they learn just from each other.”

Foreign students but also foreign exchange students add rich flavour to campus

Some of the foreign students come for part or all of an academic year as exchange students, and about half of these are from other Webster campuses; a strong selling point for Webster has for several years been the option to study on another campus. There are seven outside the US. But the exchange students in Geneva also come from another 60 US universities, a fact in which Spencer takes pride because it shows the confidence other universities place in Webster.

Webster’s student housing challenge

The solid growth in foreign students has put pressure on the university to create a stronger sense of community and, at a practical level, to resolve a longtime housing problem - not surprising given that Webster sits on the edge of the Swiss city with the tightest housing market. In 2005 Webster built a new “living and learning centre” with dormitory rooms, a fitness centre for students and a lecture hall that it actively rents out, often bringing in community groups that will interest the students.

“In 1995 Webster had virtually no student housing. Now we have students housed on campus and we have 50 apartments that we rent out. But we want to regroup them.” The university is gradually moving towards offering more dormitory-style and small group housing; one goal is to strengthen the sense of community that’s especially important for new students from other countries. The university  currently has a house in Versoix with 25 students that will be renovated, and it is making arrangements to take on a building that would house another 120 students.

An event that does stand out during Spencer’s tenure, nevertheless, is September 11, 2001, with the impact it had on foreign students, especially Muslims, who wanted to study in the US. Visas to study in the US were suddenly restricted. “It brought us more students from Muslim countries,” Spencer recalls. “Either they couldn’t get in, or in many cases they just didn’t feel comfortable going to the US. But they wanted an American university education.”

That phenomenon may also have played a role in the number of small universities that opened in the Lake Geneva area or that expanded following 9/11. Spencer says Webster has not been worried by this. “We’ve seen by now that the greater the number of English-language institutions that spring up, trying to imitate an American-style curriculum, the better we do.”

Adjunct teaching staff has a long history with Webster

A strength of Webster, he is convinced, is its adjunct teaching staff. During the 2007-2008 academic year the university had 102 people teaching. “They come from 25 countries and they are largely practitioners [actively working in their fields]. We have about 15 people who are nearly fulltime, whom we think of as our core teaching staff. Our students say whether the teachers are fulltime of adjunct, the teachers have time for them. A lot of them have been here 5 or 10 or 20 years; we don’t like a lot of turnover. We have a committed group of adjunct faculty who have a real history with us.”

The campus is growing, the students appear happy, the university is building a solid reputation in the community, but Spencer is particularly happy as the 2008-09 academic year gets underway because Webster’s key accreditation was renewed this week by the NCCAS. It was is given to Webster worldwide after a long, in-depth review process in which the Geneva campus played an active role. It is valid for 10 years with no conditions. Only 29% of universities are awarded this, he points out, and the cherry on the cake was being told by the accreditors that “You do what you say you do.” Truth in education: honest marketing is surely a good starting point for an institution that focuses on helping people gain knowledge.

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