Staff : Ph.D.

314-246-7881

kparsons@webster.edu

Director of Study Abroad, St. Louis

Kate is Director of Study Abroad for Webster University.  She has designed and taught faculty-led programs to Thailand, Costa Rica, Switzerland, and Greece, served as visiting professor with Webster partners in England and Japan, and conducted grant-supported research in Turkey, Brazil, and Indonesia. Her short-term study abroad programs on “Inequality and the Environment” and “Global Gender Rights” provide students with exciting opportunities to conduct interdisciplinary research in global, environmental, and care ethics. She is recipient of the William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching, the William and Roswell Messing, Jr. Award, a Provost's Faculty Fellowship Award, and a Leif J. Sverdrup Global Teaching Fellowship.

Kate is passionate about helping students reflect on both the privileges and responsibilities of international travel. She loves seeing the world anew through students’ eyes and believes that deeply transformative lessons emerge when we lean into discomfort, get utterly lost, and laugh through awkward translations. Her own winding academic path—through undergraduate studies in Spanish, to graduate work on gender, race, and sexuality, to a Ph.D. in philosophy—has always been motivated by questions about equity, representation, and social status. She constantly urges students to ask “Why?” and “How do we know?” and “How could the world be better?”

Kate is happy to chat with you about where in the world you might go! kparsons@webster.edu