Education

Campus Credits: Missouri's Top Schools

Posted at November 28, 2006 10:16

More Colleges and Universities

By Charles Reineke

In our article “Campus Credits: The Top Ten Schools” in the October 2006 issue, we promised to identify other nationally recognized institutions of note.

Drury University — With just over 1,500 undergraduates, you might not think tiny Drury University in Springfield would attract much attention from the big-time college ranking outfits. You’d be wrong. Drury has long been a darling of the U.S. News, Barron’s, and Princeton Review, and has also been ranked among the nation’s best for keeping first-year students “active and engaged.” How do they do it? Mostly by encouraging close working relationships with faculty, stressing the development of “core values,” and by requiring the mastery of a rigorous curriculum. Founded by earnest Congregationalists in the nineteenth-century, Drury proudly retains its Protestant affiliations. But never fear, this is not a place for religious indoctrination: Students here have a reputation for thinking critically, celebrating cultural differences, and embracing the sort of liberal learning that would make their forward-thinking forbearers proud.

Webster University — Webster University began life in 1915 as a Catholic women’s college and didn’t even admit men for almost a half-century after its founding. So it is no small irony that this St. Louis-based institution is today nationally known for its innovative program of bringing college-credit courses to the mostly male U.S. military on bases around the nation. Still, it’s not just soldiers who benefit from the Webster road show. The university runs six international campuses and, in all, boast some twenty-two thousand students of close to one hundred nationalities. The home campus in Webster Groves, meanwhile, is a lovely plot of graceful homes and parks adjacent to St. Louis. There you’ll find some five thousand students, most of whom are working toward degrees in the arts and sciences, business, fine arts and education.

College of the Ozarks — Prospective students viewing College of the Ozarks promotional literature might be forgiven for fearing that this otherwise hospitable-looking campus in fact houses a scary sort of collegiate boot camp. Welcome to “Hard Work U.” it proclaims, “A tradition that works!” But rest assured, the faculty and administrators at this Point Lookout college are not at all interested in sentencing students to four years at hard labor. Instead they are offering one of the nation’s most innovative ways of funding a college education. Here’s how it works: When enrolling at College of the Ozarks you are automatically signed up for the campus “work program,” a commitment of at least fifteen hours per week laboring in the campus computer center, chow hall, child development program (or sometimes of campus in an area businesses). The college, in turn, guarantees that your tuition and fees are covered. You get hands-on experience, real-world maturity, and a leg up on after-graduation employment. The college and the Branson community get an energetic (and captive) work force. Sound like a fair trade? Most of the major college guides think so. And so do your parents.

Kansas City Art Institute — After Thomas Hart Benton, the quarrelsome Regionalist painter from Neosho famously fled what he considered to be the “overdelicate refinements” of the New York art scene, he landed on the faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute. The no-nonsense campus of KCAI, he imagined, was surely a place where his muscular brand of figurative art would thrive. Unfortunately for him, KCAI students in the 1930s were every bit as avant-garde minded than as they are now. Benton, though much respected for his intense energy and dedication, was fired after just six years. Many of his students, meanwhile, went on to create the very type of art that Benton loathed; avant-garde works that delighted audiences and critics in New York, Paris and the rest of the overdelicate world. Today’s art and design students at this private, four-year art school are no doubt working with equal diligence toward similarly confounding their own instructors. You can too.

Extra Schools Contributed

Central Methodist University — As a church-related institution of higher education, Central Methodist University in Fayette makes no excuses. They proudly wear the badge of faith and reason as integral parts of the college experience. Established in 1853, this university has flourished while other Methodist-related schools have faded. On five campuses statewide, students are encouraged to have high ethical standards and to live a life of community service. But when asked why he chose CMU over a larger state university, senior Kyle Almeling says, “The professors know my name.” —Rebecca French Smith

October 2006

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