It’s always bothered me when asked, “Where are you going to school?”, students at Weber State would reply, “Just Weber”. I understand what they probably mean – some of their friends from high school have gone out of state or if they are in state, they are probably at generally more recognizable schools who shall remain nameless here. This post is about Weber.

A few weeks ago, I was volunteering at Dee Elementary School (for those who don’t know, I worked in the after-school program there for three years) and was chatting with a teacher whom I hadn’t seen for a while. Though I’m not sure she knows my name, which is a topic for another rant, she asked why I wasn’t around anymore. I explained I was going to graduate school at Indiana University, and that it was very different from Weber.

What I meant in saying so was that IU is a very large university – about 43000 students at the Bloomington campus alone. As such, it is a very different atmosphere from a commuter school like Weber. The teacher laughed and said, “well, the community college I went to is larger than Weber!” She kept chuckling and went on.

Though this is probably true if she went to SLCC (30000 students!), I have two problems with her reply. One: Weber is not that small of a school. Last I checked it has about 27000 students. A large portion of these are concurrent enrollment students, but not counting these leaves 20000 or so. Hardly a small number. Secondly, the size of an institution has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the education you receive. Some of my classmates went to very small liberal arts schools, some went to big name schools. I feel that the education I received at Weber is comparable to all of them, and in some cases better.

For example, every class I took at Weber was taught by a professor, not a graduate student. Only later have I realized just how beneficial this was. Working as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate statistics course at IU, I have realized just how good my statistics course at Weber was. It covered more topics, in more depth, and gave me experience with a statistical software package. This has been very useful in graduate school. Not only did I never have a graduate student as an instructor, but once I reached upper division courses, I rarely had a class with more than 15 students. The relationships I built with professors benefit me still.

Weber excels at giving undergraduate students opportunities that might not be available to them at other institutions. When I was considering medical school, I was able to teach anatomy lab and had first hand experience dissecting cadavers. Though I chose not to pursue that route, this is something that my friends didn’t get to do during their undergrad careers at other schools.

After choosing sustainability and environmental science as my primary interests, Weber gave me outstanding opportunities to meet, have a meal with, and learn from big names in the environmental and sustainability fields. James Balog, Peter Karieva, Hunter Lovins, Jim Evanoff, and Eric Lombardi come to mind. There were many meetings where I was the only person in the room without a graduate degree, and I never felt looked down upon.

Weber gave me a wealth of undergraduate research opportunities. The work I did for my senior thesis is currently under review by Quaternary International for publication. I presented at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research, at the Utah capitol building, and at a regional American Association of Geographers meeting.

There are more examples I could give, but my point is this. Regardless of where you go to school or what you are studying, the more you put in to your education, the more you will get out of it. There is no such thing as “just Weber”.