Dr.
Werner Kubsch Award - 2003 Winner:
Dr.
Kent Farnsworth
President, Crowder College
Neosho, Missouri
President, Crowder College
Neosho, Missouri
Ask
virtually anyone in community college circles in Missouri whom they associate
with global education, and the answer will be “Kent Farnsworth,
President of Crowder College.” Since coming to Crowder as President,
Dr. Farnsworth has been a clarion voice for global education in both Missouri
and across the United States. As one of the Stanley Foundation’s
keynoters at a dozen statewide global education conferences, he has become
known as the “storyteller” who convinces you that we must
all become global citizens. Dr. Farnsworth’s own experience living
abroad in Europe and the Middle East and through study fellowships to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia provide an authenticity and personal touch to
his presentations that both motivate and inspire. He is one of the founding
members of the East-West Community College Project in Thailand, and served
as one of the initial trainers for the establishment of a community college
system in Thailand.
At
the state and local level, Dr. Farnsworth has introduced a series of exchanges
and experiences at his college with the goal of providing every student
and employee who wishes the opportunity to travel and study abroad. Crowder’s
delegation to southern France for an exchange this March will include
professional staff and secretaries, as well as faculty and students. “If
global education is important for students,” he states, “it
is also important for the secretary in Admissions or Human Resources.”
These student and employee opportunities are supported by an aggressive
English Language Institute at Crowder that attracts students from fourteen
countries, special programs serving the area’s growing migrant community,
and student and faculty stipends from the college budget and from a Foundation
fund Dr. Farnsworth has personally established to support international
education.
Working
with the Stanley Foundation and Missouri’s Consortium for Global
Education, Dr. Farnsworth was a principle planner for a statewide workshop
on infusing the curriculum with global themes. Over 170 faculty from Missouri
and five other states participated and as a follow-up activity, the consortium
submitted and was funded for a Title VI grant with Dr. Farnsworth as co-coordinator.
In addition to supporting further curriculum development, the grant will
send 34 faculty to East Asia and Latin America over the next two years.
An article by Dr. Farnsworth entitled “The Values of a Global Perspective”
appeared in the Community and Junior College Journal in the April/May
issue, 2001, and his preface opens AACC’s recently published collection
of writings entitled, Internationalizing the Community College. A quote
from this preface might best summarize Dr. Farnsworth’s commitment
to global education. He wrote:
“Changing
multi-cultural attitudes in a positive way requires not just ‘information
about,’ but some kind of personal ‘experience with’
the new culture that exposes people to it on an emotional level, rather
than just an intellectual level. We must as educators get our students
out into the world and involved with other cultures at the ‘heart’
level.”