STLCC-Meramec Professor takes what she has learned through her years of teaching
Sam Wise
-Staff Photographer-
In her office stands a wall full of books, from floor to ceiling, ranging from accounting to philosophy, ethics and more. STLCC- Meramec professor Donna Werner knows many of them inside and out.
“In philosophy, I am never going to know everything I need to know,” Werner said.
This quest for knowledge has been building since Werner was a teenager, preparing for college, looking for that next step. Werner is the humanities chair, a department that covers humanities, foreign language, philosophy and music.
“As a teacher we encourage students to pick a goal and work towards it. This was never a goal I set for myself,” Werner said.
Werner was born and raised in St. Louis with a father who only had an eighth-grade education. She attended Mercy High School and had chosen a career path for herself.
“I was the first kid in my extended family to go to college; I was going to be an accountant,” Werner said.
Werner graduated from University of Missouri-St. Louis with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and was preparing for law school when she decided to start a family, postponing any idea of school. She instead took a job at McDonnell Douglas as an accountant, where she spent the next seven years.
“I had great people give me great advice, so I didn’t stay in one job,” Werner said.
Werner shifted responsibilities within McDonnell Douglas, working in accounts receivable, cost accounting for Mac Air, internal audits and she eventually joined their Special Projects Group. While there she was a part of internal control reviews.
“I was on a fast track to management,” Werner said.
She received advice to go back to school in order to move up the proverbial ladder and she agreed.
Werner, living in Edwardsville, Ill., at the time, attended Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville, where she took her Graduate Management Admissions Test to get into business school. However, she had no idea she was about to make a life-changing decision.
“When I went back to look at grad school, I didn’t want to study business. I couldn’t stand the thought of another accounting class, once I knew that library of work I was working with. That was it, I knew it, there was nothing else to learn,” Werner said. “I went over to the philosophy department to inquire about [philosophy]. They accepted the GMAT and I started taking classes.”
Werner said she was never worried about the transition from accounting to philosophy.
“In one way [philosophy] is very very different [from accounting] but I think in one way it’s very similar. Accounting is about solving puzzles with numbers in philosophy you are trying to solve puzzles too, but the puzzles are more about ideas,” Werner said.
After SIUE, Werner took a teaching assistantship in philosophy at Saint Louis University. Werner said that she had quit her full-time job to study and after 10 years she finally completed her Ph.D.
“It’s a psychological thing to finish something that large. I tried to quit so many times, but I didn’t,” Werner said.
While at SLU, Werner said she was the assistant director of a program called Ethics Across the Classroom–a program designed to align the ethics centers of each school program with each other.
“Donna Werner was the heart of our Ethics Across the Classroom, even though I was the director. She made it a university-wide and eventually a national presence by her great organizational skills and personality,” John Kavanaugh, a fellow SLU professor, said.
In 2002, Werner joined Meramec as a faculty member and a few years later became the interim dean of humanities.
Werner said she took her career a step further as she later became the interim dean of business, and one step further she took on the roll of interim dean of science as well. However, when her term was up, Werner returned to the classroom.
“Some people encouraged me to look at administration, but honestly, once you’ve been in the classroom, you get addicted to being in the classroom,” Werner said.
In 2008, Werner replaced Richard Halfuss as department chair, only one step down from her previous position as dean, but she did so to maintain classroom work. Werner currently teaches an ethics class, biomedical ethics and introduction to philosophy courses.
“I do think there’s a lot of good things you can do at that level, but for me personally, I just really like being in the classroom,” Werner said.
Werner has been intrigued by a medical ethics issue dating back to her time at SLU.
In 2001, the Ethics Across the Classroom program hosted a forum and invited an attorney as one of its speakers. Halfuss shared with Werner a story about medical ethics in regards to a former women’s health study in Tampa, Fla.
“I was astonished by it. I couldn’t get it out of my head,” Werner said.
When Werner joined Meramec, she did follow-up research to use this issue in her medical ethics class.
“When I was trying to research it, there was almost nothing in the academic literature,” Werner said.
In summer 2011, Werner was given a summer grant to write up the medical ethics case she learned of during her time at SLU for one her students.
“I got the idea that this case was bigger. It should be a book, or at least be in the ethics literature, and it’s not,” Werner said.
Werner has been granted a sabbatical to become a visiting researcher at Georgetown University at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. She will be there from Sept. 10 to Nov. 16 fall 2012.
“Part of the reason I want to be there is they have the largest medical ethics library in the country. It’s a great place to work,” Werner said.
At the conclusion of her research at Georgetown, Werner will have to present her research and findings to the faculty of the university. Werner said she is hoping to publish her findings as a paper, and possibly even a book.
“I’m petrified,” Werner said with a smile on her face.
