Women's Studies
Diane Price-Herndl, Director

Academic Mission: To create a vibrant and rigorous Women's Studies Program through which faculty and students can keep up with and contribute to the growing field of Women's Studies. The Program seeks to transform the nature of academic inquiry across the disciplines by developing and promoting both the curricular structures and a social awareness that allow the incorporation of diverse women's scholarship and issues relevant to women and gender in all disciplines.

Programs offered: Undergraduate Major (BA and BS) and Minor; Graduate Minor (since 2003)

Student Learning goals:

• foster an awareness of the varied theoretical approaches to the study of women, feminism, and gender;
  
• recognize that there is great diversity among women and therefore, many feminisms, not only in the United States but worldwide;
  
• create an understanding that interrelated factors--e.g., race, ethnicity, class, age, disability, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation--inform knowledge of women’s history, culture, and social roles;
  
• improve critical thinking and provide students with the intellectual means to question prevailing assumptions;
  
• encourage students to explore the contexts and ideological origins of knowledge and to examine the relationship between knowledge and power in society;
  
• promote social responsibility through revealing the connections between personal experience and political activity.
  

Faculty: 4 core faculty and 65 affiliated faculty from more than 20 disciplines.

Students: 7 graduate minors; 14 undergraduate majors and 45 minors; more than 1,000 students enrolled in courses each academic semester.

Courses: 12 core and more than 20 cross-listed courses offered

Changes since last year:

• 3-year grant from U.S. Department of State ($300,000) to create a university partnership with Center for Gender Studies at Kharkiv National University, Ukraine; focus on development of curricular modules and pedagogical innovations.
  
• Increased emphasis on women in science, technology and engineering; involvement in NSF ADVANCE grant preparation.