Welcome, New Students!

This week, Webster Geneva Campus launched the academic year, welcoming 53 new students (38 bachelors and 15 masters). Our new cohort, the first of two Fall intakes this year, are delighted to be back in the classroom—despite the pandemic—and they are a remarkably diverse group. By citizenship, the group represents 28 distinct nationalities (see list, below).

New Student Orientations were held on campus last week (see photo album), and an online orientation was arranged for those who could not be present. Our new semester for both new and returning students is being delivered in a hybrid format: students in Geneva classrooms will be joined online by those who are attending remotely via WorldClassRoom, Webster’s learning management system that integrates Zoom technology into its online portal. This allows for those who could not arrive on campus, due to travel restrictions or visa delays, to begin their studies.

To welcome new and returning students safely back to campus, the University has taken several actions throughout the Summer in response to the pandemic, to prepare the physical campus and classrooms for social distancing—and has also put the appropriate measures and policies in place.

While many larger universities have struggled to welcome students back, Webster’s leadership, faculty and staff remain cautiously optimistic about the advantages of a small university campus. Classrooms have been re-arranged for social distancing, for example, and each room has a maximum allowance for face-to-face attendance. High-quality Logitech cameras were installed that allow professors to change the remote camera view for those joining online.

The university’s residence on campus in Bellevue, Geneva (where most first-year students live), has single room accommodations, which supports new hygiene standards and protocols. Our center-city residence, which is primarily for upper-class students and for welcoming Study Abroad students, has also been allocated for single-room occupancy.

While most international study abroad programs have been suspended for the Fall semester, several students applied to Webster in Geneva during the Summer, after their original plans for launching abroad to the U.S. or U.K. were derailed. Many prominent institutions only recently announced that they defaulted to exclusive online delivery, and the changing landscape for international students drove some to search for a “plan B.” The University welcomes visiting students in those cases: with our institutional accreditation from the U.S., students can start here and transfer credits abroad, if that still remains their target.

Our campus community extends a warm welcome, again, to those who join us for the first time (either in person or remotely for now), including new students from:

Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Belarus
Bulgaria
Cameroon
Canada
China
Egypt
France
Germany
Greece
Israel
Kazakhstan
Lebanon
Nepal
Pakistan
Palestine
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Spain
Sudan
Switzerland
The Gambia
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uzbekistan

These new students support a longstanding tradition at Webster's Geneva campus, whose ranks of alumni include students from over 150 countries.

For more information about Webster Geneva Campus’ programs and activities, reach out to the admissions team at geneva.admissions@webster.edu