As early as the mid-1970s, William H. McNeill, the father of modern world history scholarship, warned that the pervasive tendency for faculty to pursue ever-narrowing specializations, combined with a widespread distaste for teaching survey courses, will be history's undoing. In his mind, without concerted pedagogical attention aimed at both cultivating student engagement and building an early awareness of history's relevance, the discipline cannot but slip "away from the privileged position it has hitherto occupied in high school and college curricula." McNeill was anticipating a critical turning point in history survey instruction that would see the field pivot from the increasingly archaic Western Civilization model to a more forward-looking World History approach. He rightly saw this global turn as crucial for the future security of the larger discipline of history in higher education. The purpose of this essay is to offer, in broad outline, a viable way forward for the world history survey that still leverages a high degree of freedom for instructors. In it, the author does not relate his syllabus and lesson plans in detail, but to offer the broad framework (or philosophy) that he has developed and used to rebuild his courses.