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Hello, my name is Joanne Polar and I am a member of the th university retired Faculty Association with the acronym of TFA. We are at Towson University in Baltimore County, Maryland USA. And this is an event that is sponsored by the retired faculty organization and in

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partnership with the College of Liberal Arts and the Women's and gender studies Department. I want to thank Dean Chris Cholos of Liberal Arts for his health and his interest and a very strong interest in honoring the past and many thanks to Teresa Jenkins, the college's technology

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manager and to Andrew Rosenbloom who is helping us now to Kate Wilkinson, chair of Women's and gender studies, to my colleagues in inter who helped publicize this event um especially Jane Wilson and Howard Kaplan. Uh And I want to dedicate this to Thomson University students past

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present and future. So as we said, this webinar is being recorded and it will be collected in the uh brand new women's studies, digital archive in Cook Library. As you'll hear later from one of the panelists, it, it'll be available uh on website and probably the

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Liberal Arts College and the women's and gender studies websites as well. Uh First I thought I would give an introduction before we have our panel speak. Uh I'm going to talk about women's studies of discipline and also about um the development of women's studies at university.

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And after that, we will then have uh comments from our individual panelists. And I'm sorry to keep looking down at my notes. But uh next time I do this, I will install a teleprompter which they say is uh something you can do. Uh Towson's women's studies

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program is one of the very oldest in the country. Uh We're second or at most, third in being founded. It was definitely the first program in Maryland to offer an independent major in women's studies and a master's in women's studies. Um How did that come about?

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Well, women's studies as a field was as you probably know, brand new. Uh 50 years ago, it grew directly out of the American social justice movements of the 19 sixties, the student free Speech movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-vietnam War movement, the gay rights movement.

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And of course, the women's liberation movement uh later called the second wave, to distinguish it from the first wave, which was the 19th century movement that culminated in the vote. Uh And I just wanted to show you a cover to, to show you a part of

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the activism of that time, uh which was very strong, this was a journal that was published in Baltimore for uh close to 15 years with an international circulation women, a journal of liberation. Um So it was a very heady time full of the hope of change

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and I think some change was made. So we teachers in higher ed started asking well, where are the women in our courses? Uh We began to see the gaps. We began to see the absences of women in not only our courses but in the books that

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we were using literary anthologies, had few women writers, history books, had few female figures, philosophy courses seldom discussed issues affecting women rights for women didn't appear in political science except for the vote. Psychology studies were done on white college aged men usually and then pronouncements about

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mental health would be based on those uh we that was called the male norm and it certainly was the male norm. Uh But anyway, each, each uh field had something similar and it was quite uh a problem. So we began to understand that we needed a

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new tool to examine reality to excavate some of what was ignored, despised the value. And that of course, was women's world, women's experiences, women's lives. So we started using gender as a tool of analysis, seeing reality through the lens of gender. And because it often veal

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oppression, we also saw connections to other oppressed groups in particular African Americans. Unfortunately, it took feminism and women's studies too many years and some very powerful challenges by black feminists before that gender analysis really began to be inclusive about race to any serious degree. So now

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to our thin history, we have um when we celebrated the 20th anniversary and the 30th, we have, we put out booklets um that indicated some of this and um there they are. But uh there, there's a lot to go over and of course, I'm just going

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to lightly trip through some of it in 1971, a group of faculty and students with uh met with President Jim Fisher to re request request that the curriculum include women. And this did reflect the active women's movement in the country at that time. So it was um

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a university response by the citizens of the university to what was going on outside the uh university. The academic Dean Ken Shaw agreed and he appointed a women's studies committee that was co-chair by English professors, Elaine Hedges and Sarah Coulter and Sarah is with us today

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as a Panelist to encourage and develop courses on women. So I was a fairly new adjunct. At that point, I was invited onto the committee and we got to work and Sarah and and Elaine really got to work. They visited every department on campus. And as

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I recall, the welcome mat was not always put out for them, but they, they did it, they grid grid their cheese and did it? Some courses on women appeared early in the departments for example, the first women's studies course on campus was Fred Rivers History course

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on uh women of the 19th century that was in 1971 in 72 courses in English by Elaine Hedges and George Friedman took place as well as a philosophy course by me course is designated only by a women's studies. Number started in 1973, which is why we um consider

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this the 50th anniversary year. Now, since the program was an outro of the social movement, things were not just happening in the classroom, first of all, amazingly, but because Towson was a college dedicated to education and child development. At that point, we already had two day

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care centers on campus and the third was added because of this movement. And that was a day care center for students, the um Children of students in 1972, a women's center was created. Perhaps Annette Chappel will speak about that later to provide a safe space for

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women. And I must say it was a sad little place. It was on the farthest eastern edge of the campus in a Kwanzaa, but it was there and we were thrilled with it. By 1974, we had an affirmative action officer again in at camp and a

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newsletter that I was editing called on our Minds. And um here you can see perhaps there's a little mimeograph item that went on for several years. Um So the, the courses in the department. First of all, they were appearing in various departments, but we felt pretty

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quickly that we needed an interdisciplinary course because there this was to be an interdisciplinary discipline. Now, this was a tough thing to pull off because it was not only a new discipline, but it was an interdisciplinary discipline. And for many years, we had no faculty actually

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directly assigned to it. So we had to rely on progressive administrators like Annette Chappell, like Dan Jones in English to occasionally wave their magic wand and, and give us some space and give us something that looked like a women's studies course. We developed the intro course,

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women in perspective and first taught it in 1973 and it was still being taught. And it also has an international um version called international perspective. It's been taught in sometimes as many as 15 sections a semester and um is a very important course. And I have

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to say it's the hardest course I ever taught and I taught it many times, but it in it uh involves keeping up with the latest in the law in health, in education and in a variety of other fields. And um it, it is very challenging. I

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want to stop here and say that we relied greatly over the years and over these 50 years on excellent part-time faculty. And we had many and they taught this introductory course, women in perspective. Uh and they taught it very well. And of course, the most important

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of those was Judy Barris, who was an incredibly skilled instructor and also an avid reader of the new scholarship on women. And that was coming out in droves. Um It was hard to keep up with it during the seventies and eighties. There are too many others

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that uh I that are on that list of part-time faculty. Some of them are actually um still teaching uh uh in the department. But I want to mention Paula Rangle, Chris Fox, Beverly Schuman, Linda Stone, Sarah Bagus Margaret Blanchard, Claire, Mear Marty Walker Sue. During and

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many other, we also had a de dedicated office staff uh over the years uh affiliate faculty were very important because they were faculty who had full time positions in in other departments and yet who developed courses that could be what we would say, what we call

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cross listed in women's studies. Uh That was extremely important and that really greatly led to the development of the program. So to get back to the dates in 1976, the the minor in women's studies was created in 79. The program offered a radio series called Common

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Language that was funded by the Maryland Commission on the Humanities and directed by Doctor K Edington with a little help from me. The 80s were ridiculously busy and Sarah Coulter will talk about that. I'm sure um there were several grants that were won by Sarah Coulter

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and Elaine Hedges. Um and um, excuse me, uh one of one of those was the um community college grant that Doctor Shirley Parry will be speaking about in a little bit which disseminated some of this curriculum work to the other to the community colleges. Uh The,

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the newsletter became a newsletter reporting on this massive curriculum immigration work that was being done. And then in the nineties, two centers were set up to reflect that important work curricular work. The Institute for teaching and research on women and the National Center for Curriculum Transformation

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Resources on women and Sarah culture will speak about that. We started a women's studies colloquium series and we began hiring faculty directly into the women's studies program. Doctor Esther Wangari was the first faculty member to be hired and her specialty is health issues. In 1999, we

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accepted the first students into our new Masters program and it was a wonderful cohort. There was, for example, a husband and wife from Turkey who both of whom went on to earn phd s. There was an activist from York Pennsylvania who worked with battered women. We

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also hired the wonderful Karen Dugger that year to teach and to run one of the research centers. Um In um 2002, the program became a department. There's a lot more history, but obviously, I've, I've taken too much time already. It is hard to decide what to

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include in this quick survey. But I, I want to say a little bit about directing the program, Elaine Hedges took over the direct running of the program and, and sadly, she was deceased. Um she retired in the mid nineties but Sarah culture was, has been vastly

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important to the program. She continued as Armenian's major advisor and as a teacher in her own right, and a specialist in pe pedagogy, then she took on of course, greater challenges with setting up uh the National Center on Curriculum Resources, which she'll speak about. Uh After

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Elaine retired, I became director and then chair when it became a department. Then Karen Dugger, Cindy Gissendaner and now Kate Wilkinson, uh just to conclude, I've focused on the women's studies program itself that there were many fellow travelers, faculty, staff, librarians and administrators in so many

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departments and divisions throughout the campus who supported the program and went above and beyond so many times to help it thrive. So this was a truly a campus community effort. I will now turn this over to the panelists and we're going to start with Annette Chappel

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and she will tell you of her involvement after Annette, we'll have to have Sarah Coulter. I'm gonna wait until the very end to make my remarks. Uh Jacqueline will cots will be next Rod Ryan after that. And uh Ashley Todd Diaz, and then if there's time,

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I will make a few personal reflections of my own. So, Annette, would you like to begin. Thank you, Joanne. Am I UN muted? Yes. Yes. OK. Good. I think I was in on the beginning and involved throughout. Um I was one of those women who uh

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went to President Fisher to get women's studies and the Student Day Care Center started. I was, I, I team taught the first women in literature course with Jan Wilcots, Elaine Solas and Sarah Coulter. I was involved in the starting of the Women's Center. But my, my

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biggest involvement was in the lives of women faculty in establishing salary, equity and promotion equity. You may remember the title nine came into effect in 1972. And I made myself an expert on title nine and Jane Sheets. And I did the first salary equity studies for

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to. And as a result of all that President Fisher asked me in 1974 to become the first affirmative action officer. So I was affirmative action for three years and hiring rank and salary were very central to what I was doing. And then I sort of morphed

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again and became a dean and I was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts for 17 years and then associate vice president for three years. And in all those roles, I continued to be involved in women's studies in curriculum development in the status of the Women's

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Studies program and the creation of the Institute for Teaching and research on Women and the National Curriculum Center. And I would I would say that my role in many cases was to be a cheerleader and an enabler in the good sense of that word and an

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interpreter to interpret between the women's studies faculty and the administration, which did not always understand what was going on or why. So I think a major impression for me is that there were not very many of us but boy, we were energetic and we got a

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lot done. And part of that was because we had, we were interlocking entities. So women's studies, Women's Center, affirmative action all worked together to make things happen. And I think that was very important. I also think it's important that long before 1000 decided that it was

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an institution interested in research. We were interested in research and we made that happen too. I would like to use the rest of my few minutes to tell a story. I I have always thought that that's the major role of deans is to be storytellers to

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tell the stories of what happens in their, in their area and to reflect those stories back to the faculty and the students. So this is my story. In 1976, Barbara Mikulski campaigned for Congress and if you don't know Barbara Mikulski, you have missed something. So Barrow

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was campaigning for Congress and her kickoff of her campaign happened at Towson in the University Union of all places. And Gloria Steinem was the keynote speaker. This was major for us. This was so exciting and I was the affirmative action officer Betty Friedan had written a

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book called the Feminine Feminine Mystique. And there was a local doctor and bigwig in the Democrat party in Maryland named Edgar Berman who had parodied it by calling it the feminist mistake. And he was famous for a quotation about women being unsuited for leadership because of

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their raging hormones. So he was a member of our board of trustees and President Fisher called me into his office and said, Edgar wants to go to the Barbara Mikulski rally. You will take him and keep him out of trouble. This was quite an assignment. So

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of course, because of our networking and interlocking nature, the first thing I did was call Sarah and Elaine and tell them this was going to happen that he was going to be there. So we went to the event and Elaine introduced Gloria Steinem and Gloria Steinem

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began to speak and at some point in her talk, she said, and there's this doctor called Edgar Berman who says, and she started quoting and Edgar jumped up and said, that's not what I said, you're misquoting me. And I could hear Sarah say that really is

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Doctor Berman and Gloria Steinem never missed a beat. She said, Doctor Berman, it's so nice to meet you. Finally, I hope we'll have a chance to talk after the program is over and he subsided because he got the the attention he wanted and things went on

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except that Barb Mikulski jumped up and yelled hia doc in that raspy voice that we all probably remember. And that was one of my greatest memories about being part of the feminist movement at Taft. Thank you. Mhm. Thank you, Annette. I, I was there and was

00:25:12.069 - 00:25:33.979

laughing at your, your retelling of all of that. Uh Yeah, Edgar Berman, who said that women can't go into any kind of responsible fields or become doctors or uh God forbid CEO S or anything of any higher status because of their raging hormones. Uh Anyway, I,

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I just wanted to correct myself that uh I blanked on uh the panel, the some of the panel members as I was pulling them out of my head before, after Sarah Coulter, uh Jacqueline Wilcox, then Rod Ryan, who was in one of the 80s workshops, uh

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Then Martha Siegel, then Shirley Perry and then Ashley to Diaz uh to talk about the, the archive being create, created. So Sarah Coulter, would you like to see start? Thank you. As you can see from Annette's presentation, we had a lot of support and we needed

00:26:21.060 - 00:26:51.540

it at different levels and we did have a network that was very effective and necessary as I was reviewing the um materials, the many, many materials that we generated during 30 years of working on this. I was actually astonished at how much had been accomplished and

00:26:51.550 - 00:27:12.390

wondered how in the world we ever did it. I remember that, uh, later Beth Van Fossen and I were using a Microsoft Project program that was supposed to tell you what, how effective, what you were doing was and how realistic and so forth and so on.

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And after going through a lot of questions, it didn't really seem very relevant to our kind of work. The conclusion was you don't have enough time and you don't have enough money and we thought, well, we knew that to begin with and we're gonna have to

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do it anyway, which we did. I think that's characteristic of a lot of this kind of work. Uh It's not practical but it gets done because people are so totally committed to uh the importance of it. I will be talking a lot about grant proposals and

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what they they did. Um But that is was part of the my major contribution in the 80s. Um Are we had several grant proposals? I think one of the benefits of a grant proposal. And it's mentioned in the history that um was the first one we

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wrote, which we did not receive was to the National Endowment for the Humanities. And that was just an informal group of faculty at thin who decided they wanted to try to start women's studies. And it was a very good proposal. I went back and read it

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recently and uh but I think it was before its time. Um granting agencies hadn't quite gotten up to speed on how important this was. But one of the benefits of writing a proposal you um have to think through in more detail than you otherwise would if

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you're just thinking about it as an abstract idea, what you want to do, how you would do it and how much it's gonna cost and put it on a timeline. And by the time you do that you're ready to do the work, whether you get the

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money or not. And that's kind of what we did. So I can't say enough for the benefit of the hard work, often uh unpopular work of writing a grant proposal just to get your ideas on paper and make them practical to a certain degree. But our

00:29:26.790 - 00:29:52.369

second attempt which was a grant proposal to F F C which was fund for the improvement of postsecondary education inside the US. Department of Education was more successful and that was the project that funded three years of faculty development work for and faculty. And the faculty

00:29:52.380 - 00:30:14.250

volunteered for these workshops, they met five times a semester and talked over and compared what they were doing in their courses and were working on reviewing the new scholarship on women to see whether they felt it could be incorporated more than it had been and what

00:30:14.260 - 00:30:37.290

the basic conceptual issues were of this work um that was successful in many ways. Uh One way that's very elementary faculty don't get a chance to talk to each other about their teaching very much. We spend a lot of time in committees, but it's not about

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the courses for teaching. It's about shaping programs or curriculum or budget or whatever, but it's you don't talk to your colleagues uh about your teaching and this was a refreshing opportunity to do that. Uh We had over 70,000 faculty in workshops for three years um representing

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13 different disciplines. And we structured the program to not only allow faculty some time to review some of the scholarship and each workshop was led by a um faculty member who had taking on the responsibility of becoming an expert in that field. And the fact that

00:31:26.709 - 00:31:48.359

you were talking to other people in your discipline also contributed to the progress that could be made. And it was amazing that people teaching out of the same anthology were teaching totally different courses because of course, anthologies are simply compendiums of possible selections and you never

00:31:48.369 - 00:32:09.520

teach the whole book. You couldn't, but what was being selected by faculty was different and they didn't know that they really didn't realize how differently they were handling this material. And so that in itself was something of a revelation. And then as these issues of women

00:32:09.530 - 00:32:28.550

not being there or if they were there, they were in a very secondary role, which probably meant that they weren't being selected because the course was already too full of the major great writers who were usually men. But the anthology itself included a lot of kind

00:32:28.560 - 00:32:51.739

of secondary men writers, but that excluded um major women writers or what could have been major women writers. So it was very interesting to see how this developed. And I was fascinated to attend these workshops because it was interesting to see how very bright faculty in

00:32:51.750 - 00:33:13.160

different disciplines, conceived of their discipline and their work. You know, what, what the values, the um what was important. Uh It was to me an education that I greatly value and I don't think I could have had such a broad education in any other way. Um

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As I reviewed a lot of their work and their, their revised syllabi, I thought, oh, I would love to take some of these courses. It's a little late, but they look quite fascinating. We published a book that was apparently quite popular because we had to go

00:33:31.930 - 00:33:53.329

to a second printing called Resources For Curriculum Change. And this includes the material from that three year project at. And I will be putting this in the uh special collection. These copies must have been popular if we went to a second printing. But um they're not

00:33:53.339 - 00:34:18.570

anywhere on campus apparently. So I will send my copies and uh get them uh where people can find them. And also I would recommend that um you, you do a simple Google search for things because the Eric Database um just systematically collects everything in education that

00:34:18.580 - 00:34:33.020

gets put out there where they can find it. And I was amazed when I was hunting for things that I was afraid had disappeared and they're often there. But the Google search is the simplest way of getting there because the Eric database itself has a rather

00:34:33.030 - 00:34:54.959

complex search structure. And I finally learned the simple way, just do it on Google and they'll send you to the place in Eric where it exists if in fact, it exists there. Um Then, on the basis of our success with that project, we put in another

00:34:55.540 - 00:35:13.850

uh 50 project because we had started to do some work with community colleges and realized that there was a great need and a great interest in the community college for the kind of work we were doing and for the resources that we were discovering and had

00:35:13.860 - 00:35:42.260

available. Um We had conferences with 11 community colleges in the Baltimore Washington area. And out of that 11, we um had five that were willing to participate in a grant which involves some pretty significant institutional contributions. A community college faculty are vastly overworked. They have to

00:35:42.270 - 00:35:59.709

teach so many courses that they if you ask them to do anything extra such as these workshops, that was just way beyond the pale. So we said, OK, any community college that, that, that is gonna participate in our project has to give their participating faculty three

00:35:59.719 - 00:36:18.320

hours of release time now that's money from the institution's point of view. And so they were, you know, not always, some were already far enough ahead of the curve on how important women studies was that they said right away upfront. Yes, we will do that. Others

00:36:18.330 - 00:36:39.449

were a little more reluctant and looked at that budget and uh it took a while to get them to participate. But out of the 11, we had five and they were in a project for two years that essentially replicated the Towson project um but adapted to

00:36:39.459 - 00:37:08.260

community college uh situations and circumstances and in reviewing the work they did. And the introductory material, I was reminded that community colleges Enrolled over 50 of the freshmen in higher education. And of those uh uh the majority are women and of those, the majority are minorities and ethnic

00:37:08.469 - 00:37:32.199

groups. So it was a tremendously important group and with which to do this work. And um it was a very exciting kind of thing we had uh rotating meetings. Now, this sounds in addition to something that's gonna require a lot of driving from one campus to

00:37:32.209 - 00:37:51.610

the other. It sounds onerous. We all learn to put maps in our cars because we never been to some of these campuses before. And certainly the community college faculty that were participating hadn't been to the other campuses physically before. That's important. That's very important. It's a

00:37:51.620 - 00:38:12.149

reality check. And uh so these simple things are like classically talking to each other about their teaching, which you would think would be a major topic all the time. Um These things don't happen until something like this causes something to happen. So the community college project

00:38:12.159 - 00:38:37.169

I think was extremely important. And I will tell you that national consultants who looked at that proposal said this is really important and nobody's doing it. So the community college project and their uh record of that project was published and the community college got guide to

00:38:37.179 - 00:38:57.590

curriculum change. And this too is um a publication that I will, I'm not quite sure where it went, but I hope it went to all the community colleges, but I have two copy that I will be sending to the Cook Library for uh part of the

00:38:57.600 - 00:39:34.770

special collection in women's studies. Then following up on that, we did a grant proposal to uh develop a clearing house and that was through the Ford Foundation and of curriculum transformation resources nationally. And um that was exhausting. We um we published different kinds of materials that

00:39:34.780 - 00:39:59.169

we felt would be significant if other institutions wanted to do these kinds of projects. And hundreds were doing them in one form or another anyway. Um But our primary publication was a directory. This was a hard bound directory, curriculum transformation projects and activities in the United

00:39:59.179 - 00:40:21.270

States. And it was a selection of over 200 and we um were zeroing in each uh of the 200 has a page. But on that page, we indicated where it was located. How many participants who were the project leaders, how much funding they had, who had

00:40:21.280 - 00:40:42.510

provided the funding and contact information? Because in publications, any publications that came out of these projects and the um contact information was very important because project leaders are very generous and since they're very committed to what they're doing, they're more than eager to share with others.

00:40:42.520 - 00:41:06.199

If you call them up or if you email them, you eventually, they'll have time to talk to you and it can be very, very beneficial. Now, also, from that project, we published a smaller um five by eight um set of hard bound that were it instructions

00:41:06.209 - 00:41:23.929

on how to do curriculum transformation, how to uh fund it, how to um used the internet. John Cornman at U MC P had was an expert on internet uses which at that time was pretty new and a lot of faculty didn't know how to do it.

00:41:24.399 - 00:41:52.310

So that was very valuable and several others we in addition, did a stack oh curriculum analysis essays which had been generously donated by faculty from all over the United States. On what are the basic issues when you're trying to look at the gender uh issues in

00:41:52.320 - 00:42:10.350

your discipline that you need to deal with. One of the ironies of this, our bookstore was selling these in a revolving rack. And actually the people who seem to be making the most use of them were students and they were buying them because when they asked

00:42:10.360 - 00:42:27.340

their professors, I wanna do a research project, you know, on this woman or that or this issue or that their professors really didn't know what to tell them. And so they'd get these little booklets and they would get a lot of information and I hope, uh

00:42:27.350 - 00:42:55.370

a permanent change in their perspective towards their discipline. Then finally, um Dorothy Haley at the City University of New York donated their publications to the center. Um The, the these are panels of experts from around the United States at the that were gathered together at the

00:42:55.379 - 00:43:22.750

City University of New York uh under the title Rethinking the Disciplines. And um they have anthropology, sociology, psychology, literature, and biology. And that was very nice of her that we were allowed to, to reprint and sell these um that project I think was um very influential,

00:43:22.760 - 00:43:42.419

interestingly enough, one of the best projects in my opinion and I reviewed all of them uh was from Puerto Rico. And I don't know whether it's because they feel like they're a separate island off somewhere by themselves that they had to do it so well because

00:43:42.590 - 00:44:00.010

they didn't kind of see themselves as kind of communicating with the rest of us. But in any event, I went to their conference uh when they were celebrating their work and I told them that I thought actually, theirs is the most thorough, the most careful, the

00:44:00.020 - 00:44:24.649

most specific of any of the, the projects that I had reviewed as many and that all the projects were good. So, um by 1999 I was worn out and I decided it was time to retire. I didn't want any more grant proposals and I thought that,

00:44:24.729 - 00:44:39.669

you know, things could, we'd given everything a good start and certainly so many people were contributing. I, I was just amazed at the number of people. Once you go, go back and look at how things got done, it got done because of the commitment of so

00:44:39.679 - 00:45:03.010

many wonderful people at all levels of activity. So uh I'm very eager to see what other people remember about this period because I think everybody has their own personal uh perspective and that's what makes it such a rich story. So, thank you very much. Thank you,

00:45:03.020 - 00:45:25.580

Sarah for everything. Um I thought that uh and Shirley and I have been conferring about this, but perhaps it'd be best for Doctor Shirley Perry to go next because she was involved in the community college curriculum project. And since you've just talked about it, so would

00:45:25.590 - 00:45:47.580

you like to do that? Surely, I'd be delighted. Thank you. So, thank you for inviting me to be as part of this exciting event, Joanne. And uh congratulations to the Women's studies program at Towson for 50 years. I mean, that's really fabulous. So, um I just

00:45:47.590 - 00:46:08.850

wanna basically talk a little bit about the impact of the community College grant that uh for um uh integrating uh women's scholarship into the pedagogy into the curriculum, the impact of that grant on at Anna Community College. Um And I'm gonna let I know that Rod

00:46:08.860 - 00:46:23.510

and other people are gonna talk about what the, what the groups were like, what the uh the uh workshops were like on their campus. And I'm sure that the workshops on our campus were very similar. So I'm not gonna go into that. Uh In 1986 the

00:46:23.520 - 00:46:46.270

grant, the two year grant project that Sarah described for uh disseminating that to community colleges took place in 1988 to 1990. It was a four semester project for uh the Community College faculty in 1986. 2 years prior to the grant itself. Uh Sarah and Elaine had

00:46:46.280 - 00:47:06.590

put together a statewide group of faculty, uh community college faculty to plan this grant for dissemination uh for curriculum transformation in the community colleges. And knowing that Anna Ruel would potentially be involved, I began introducing our faculty to the issue. Uh First thing I did was

00:47:06.600 - 00:47:22.090

I or I organized an informal faculty study group to read and discuss issues of feminist scholarship and pedagogy. And as Sarah said, people were thrilled. I mean, it was like all of a sudden there was this option of something they hadn't really thought about. Although a

00:47:22.100 - 00:47:41.669

lot was going on in the outer world, in the outside world. Um And so, uh 12 male and female faculty uh joined this study group that read and discussed these issues of feminist scholarship, et cetera from a wide variety of disciplines, including both career disciplines and

00:47:41.679 - 00:48:02.399

liberal arts disciplines. Those are the two academic sides of, of our community, college academic world. And uh they regularly attended for the entire semester as did the two academic deans, which I thought was amazing. Uh And a year later to keep the interest going, we had

00:48:02.409 - 00:48:21.560

Sarah come and give a talk on curriculum transformation and that did exactly what we hoped it would do. It excited the entire campus. Everybody got thrilled and you know, turned on about it. So following the grant, this is now in 1990 uh in, in the spring,

00:48:21.570 - 00:48:37.379

in the uh fall, we did things like we had departmental and divisional presentations by on women's scholarship, by the members of the grant uh project. And that was really important. It was like, you know, people in as has already been read, people in psych didn't know

00:48:37.389 - 00:48:55.590

what was going on. People in history didn't fully know what was going on, et cetera. And we also got together with the librarians and we created divisional and departmental bibliographies for people that uh included audio and visual resources, by the way, which were very interesting. We

00:48:55.600 - 00:49:15.870

gave talks on campus and we um also gave talks in the community, by the way, which was very intentional. And we worked uh to set the stage for more faculty curriculum transformation. The ultimate goal was to establish a women's studies program ourselves at a community college.

00:49:16.889 - 00:49:33.850

So in 1990, the summer, after the last semester of the grant and the last semester of the grant, the next to last semester of the grant, we revised co our of course that we regularly taught. And the final semester of the grant we taught that course.

00:49:34.129 - 00:49:53.199

So we'd already made serious progress. So the sum the sum that summer with all the activity going on on campus, we persuaded the president of an Arundel community college, Thomas Florio, who originally had been very reluctant to get involved in the SIE grant. And we went

00:49:53.209 - 00:50:07.610

up to the last day before I finally went in his office and said, why are you shooting yourself in the foot? This is a really good project, you know, you've got to do it. And so finally, he sent a letter to Sarah saying, ok, Sarah finally

00:50:07.620 - 00:50:24.820

had what she wanted. We had the five community colleges, et cetera. So anyway, that summer after we'd had the project, we went to the president and we persuaded him that we needed to make the college a regional resource in women's issues. This was very strategic. I

00:50:24.830 - 00:50:45.899

assure you this, we said would bring him a claim that's what he needed to hear. And in order to do that. We said we needed to create a Women's Institute at Aaron Community College that would serve as this regional resource. So he agreed we founded it

00:50:45.909 - 00:51:04.860

and he funded it and he funded it significantly. So the Women's Institute did a number of things. But the most important thing that the Women's Institute did was by the way, it still exists uh was to offer curriculum transformation seminars during the summer. Sarah has already

00:51:04.870 - 00:51:17.760

mentioned that one of the things we had to deal with was faculty members reluctance to do anything during the school year because we taught 15 credits a semester. So anything on top of our regular load and the stuff we were doing, the committees we were on

00:51:17.770 - 00:51:38.050

was just too much. So we had uh summer seminars on curriculum transformation in different areas, faculty, you know, discipline areas and the funding that we got enabled each faculty participant to get summer school pay for being in the seminar. And it also gave us enough money

00:51:38.060 - 00:51:54.040

to hire an expert for each of the sum of the summer seminars we often offered. We began by offering three a semester, three a summer rather in different disciplines. But it, you know, it became that waxed and waned. Um And so we had a fa faculty

00:51:54.050 - 00:52:19.110

expert for each one consultant. Initially, these uh faculty experts were the veterans of our own community college project, the psy project. But as the variety of academic disciplines grew in terms of who was interested in doing this. We wound up um creating a different um format

00:52:19.120 - 00:52:44.530

for it. Um We began, we started to have individual faculty members working with individual experts remotely. So thus, my friend Beth Ha Hole in astronomy, who wanted to study how gender and race influence how adults learn physical science concepts. She also wanted to know what physical,

00:52:44.540 - 00:53:05.780

what teaching and intervention resources existed and recruitment strategies to get more women and minorities into astronomy. So we paired her with a Professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado and they had a fabulous time together. It was very productive. Another faculty member

00:53:05.790 - 00:53:25.090

who did we did this with was a woman who was a licensed uh clinical social worker who taught chemical dependency counseling in our human services uh division. She wanted to understand more about the causes of women's addiction, major factors in their recovery and how to train

00:53:25.100 - 00:53:46.510

students to address these issues in their patients because they were potentially new social workers. So we paired her with a woman phd and Masters of Public Health at Harvard Medical School. And we also prepared an education. Sorry paired an education professor who taught early childhood development

00:53:47.129 - 00:54:04.649

and wanted to know more about the development of gender in young Children and the influence of different cultures on that development. So we paired her with a faculty member in education at the University of Maryland, all of this. This led to a whole bunch of new

00:54:04.659 - 00:54:20.520

courses. In 1990, there were four new, at the end of the sorry, 1990. Yes. At the end of 1990, we had four new courses that were, we never had before. We had uh women in women in American history. We had images of women in film. We

00:54:20.530 - 00:54:33.020

had women's health issues. And then, and we had a, we had already had a women in literature course for, for many years, I had a friend of mine and I had developed that for many years ago. And we also had a one credit self-defense for women,

00:54:33.030 - 00:54:57.959

which I loved. And these courses were really popular. Anyway, um all of this that I've just talked to you about created ultimately led to an ao community college establishing its very own women's studies program. In 1995 it grew quickly and now renamed to Gender and sexuality

00:54:57.969 - 00:55:18.850

studies. It regularly offers 11 different courses with multiple sections of many of them and is very successful. And all of this, all of this is thanks to the thus and women's studies program and to Sarah Coulter, its director, Sarah Coulter and Elaine Hedges and we are

00:55:18.860 - 00:55:53.570

deeply grateful. Thank you so much. Thank, thank you Shirley for that. Thank you, wonderful presentation. Um Next Jacqueline Wilcots will talk about some of the courses that she taught and, and perhaps also about the workshop that she's involved in and jam are used. Let's see. Are

00:55:53.590 - 00:56:33.600

you? Oh, hi. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Then Rod will, will be after Jan. Hm. Ok. Can anyone hear me? Yes. Excellent. Ok. It turns out to, um, uh, so that you can see me as well. I'm going to have to leave the meeting and then rejoin it.

00:56:33.620 - 00:56:55.830

Let us hope that this work. Can anyone see me right now? Yes. Yes. Oh. Oh, that's great. I can't see you, but that's, that's all right. I've been watching you all along. OK. I came 2000 in the fall of 1973. And as you know, from hearing

00:56:55.840 - 00:57:24.350

Joanne and Annette and Sarah, um the foundation had was already there for me. And so what I did was I taught courses at first and as Annette pointed out, we taught uh uh together a course in women's literature, uh which went under the name. Then I

00:57:24.360 - 00:57:48.320

blushed to say it, women writers. Uh the most recent of what would turn out eventually to be a uh a text for such a course. Uh In 1973 74 it did not exist yet. It, the first edition came out in I think 1986 actually, uh Gilbert

00:57:48.330 - 00:58:14.169

and Cooper uh Literature by women. And at least they put the English tradition. Now, the most recent edition of that book. However, in two volumes, about 2200 pages is uh literature by women. Uh the Global Picture, although not all of the global picture. But you can

00:58:14.179 - 00:58:39.810

see, we, we started out uh where we had begun, my dissertation had been on Virginia Wolf. And so I seem to be a natural for this course. Um And indeed the wool uh work that wolf herself had done in trying to trace women's writing. At least

00:58:39.820 - 00:59:14.209

the tradition in English seemed to be a kind of model at the beginning. Uh But also, uh Elaine Hedges had been very active in the modern language association work on women writers. Uh She had I believe, organized the uh uh M L A session for which

00:59:14.219 - 00:59:42.000

Tilly Olson, an important important 20 of century writer who is uh who has, who needs to be uh more prominent these days. Uh Kelly Olson gave a talk women writers in our century one out of 12. Um And so I have Tilly Olsen's book Here, Silences

00:59:42.820 - 01:00:15.149

in those first, in that first decade with no Northern anthology yet. Uh It was in separate volumes that we found are women writers. Here is an early paperback of Tony Morris and Sua, which was a novel originally published in 1971 but not available in paperback for

01:00:15.159 - 01:00:42.399

quite a while there after. And it was still decades until the Nobel Prize. Um Alice Walker's Anthology of work by Zor Neil Hurston, another work of a woman looking back on her own history as an African American writer. And that was I think first published around

01:00:42.409 - 01:01:06.074

1979. Then came the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. This is the second edition, not the first, which uh came out earlier and an early work of the, the wonderful work that Gilbert and Guar did for all of us who love reading, not just teach English

01:01:06.084 - 01:01:32.399

and literature of The Mad Woman in the attic. The first of their volumes of literary criticism taking a feminist point of view. So I loved all of that. It was an exercise and an uh an exciting one for me. Um I also was aware of the

01:01:32.409 - 01:01:59.620

work being done in literature during the mainstreaming project of the 80s. But my own uh greatest delight was in the mainstreaming workshop for teachers of writing. And that was such fun because I got to just sit back and listen to all of the wonderful ideas that

01:01:59.629 - 01:02:28.879

the people in that group had. I was the only tenured. Indeed, I believe I was the only tenure track person in that workshop. Uh Most of the others were uh part time or at least several of the others. Everyone I believe had begun part time and

01:02:28.889 - 01:02:52.520

some were still teaching part time and they had great ideas and a great deal of enthusiasm for the work which included thinking about pedagogy as the, the way in which we teach the way in which we relate to one another in the classroom, as well as

01:02:52.610 - 01:03:32.020

about how one teaches the principles of writing. Um And so Uh My work was never so much on the organizational ways of getting more information out to the larger communities, but I loved my students crazy as some of them were and incredibly gifted and thoughtful as

01:03:32.030 - 01:03:52.830

almost all of them were at their best moments. So I think I should stop there to give a chance to get back to the mainstreaming theme and to give Joanne a little bit of a chance to talk about the great teaching that she's done. Well. Thank.

01:03:52.840 - 01:04:16.790

Thank you so much, Jan. Um All of the writers that you mentioned, bring back so many, so many memories. They were so important to all of us and, and um uh I should mention too, Elaine Hedges uh very important afterword for Charlotte Perkins, Gilman yellow Wallpaper

01:04:17.080 - 01:04:43.120

that became one of the largest selling editions that the feminist press ever published. Rod Ryan uh is, and are you there? You are. I, I am. Do you hear me? Yes. Yes. He was in one of the workshops. Uh I think it was, I'm not sure

01:04:43.129 - 01:05:01.024

of social sciences, history. I'm not sure what it was called, but go ahead. Uh I, I, I think of his history. Um And uh uh from that uh there, I, there were curriculum changes that were made by me and by the department, I was trying to

01:05:01.034 - 01:05:21.649

think as we're talking about the different disciplines. Uh What is perhaps a little bit different from uh history. Uh And uh, uh, one difference I think is that, um, students came into history classes, uh, thinking that they understood what the, uh, what history was and perhaps

01:05:21.659 - 01:05:39.030

the, the, uh, young students would not know what sociology was or what philosophy was before they arrived to take their liberal arts courses. Um, and one of the, uh, conceptions of it was, it, it's not only about the past but it's about public affairs and public

01:05:39.040 - 01:05:56.739

figures. In the past I taught uh only USA history the 38 years I was there. And this meant uh I've always thought when students showed up the first day, they expected to hear about the presidents who were all male, the Congress, which is all male and

01:05:56.750 - 01:06:16.100

uh discoverers uh warriors uh who were all male as well. And so the uh project uh encouraged me to sort of change this conception somewhat, although I will say that I had done some things uh before. And uh one thing that happened with the project was

01:06:16.110 - 01:06:34.610

an ability to talk to other faculty members in my department uh about what they were doing as well. Um One thing that's, I think uniform for history courses at that time and I assume still uh distinguishing it from uh probably I think from uh literature and

01:06:34.620 - 01:06:52.239

philosophy and some other things is that we don't really deal with text to analyze um a little bit here and there, the Declaration of Independence and the origin of it and the, and the like, but we don't deal with uh uh text to analyze uh uh

01:06:52.250 - 01:07:20.909

and uh one consequence of this uh of uh the background that students had is and also the uh the requirement that sort of imposed the entire system imposed uh was that um uh our department was large, I think there were 16 people hired from 1964 to 1972. Uh and once

01:07:20.919 - 01:07:37.620

the ferment was there to talk about what you were doing with your courses, there's a reasonable amount of uh chain exchange. And uh that was uh very helpful to me and I think to others. Um But at the same time, we were in influenced by this

01:07:37.629 - 01:07:58.669

preconception that students brought to it. I say that because one sort of immediate uh influence was the uh that brought about uh some reform of courses was an emphasis on biography. Uh We're aware that uh that department is, is as large as it is, is because

01:07:58.989 - 01:08:18.439

um there's a requirement that elementary school teachers must take usa history, American history. Um And uh actually what we knew about the uh lower school curriculum is that that, that too has an emphasis on biography. Elementary school teachers are supposed to do some social studies. Uh

01:08:18.450 - 01:08:37.450

And they want to do uh they do things around the holidays, for example, they can't do things for religious holidays. So they celebrate Washington's birthday and George Washington than in Abraham. Lincoln's birthday and it emphasizes this idea of biography. Uh To me, that was the initial

01:08:37.459 - 01:08:59.549

place to start transforming, transforming your course. Uh I was in fact hired in part because uh my doctoral dissertation was a biography of a reformer in American history. Uh And also as we began to change in the 1970s, uh there was as far as uh a

01:08:59.634 - 01:09:20.705

figures in American history, uh a relatively large amount of good biographies in the way that they were not uh on other subjects of American history. Uh the suffragists of the 1840s and 1850s. Um and uh other other figures as well, particularly the reforms of the early 20th century.

01:09:21.169 - 01:09:40.890

Uh So that's part of it emphasizing uh taking up biography and doing it much to greater detail that had been done before. Um But a second kind of way was sort of little shifts and changes. Uh And which because we're sort of students of the secondary

01:09:40.899 - 01:10:04.270

literature we become aware of. Um uh for example, in a pre uh changed history course, if I were discussing uh Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Roosevelt administration, I would say that he uh appointed the first women cabinet member Francis Perkins. And that would take about what,

01:10:04.279 - 01:10:22.040

20 seconds and then I would go on to the men in the Roosevelt administration and what they did. But it's quite possible to say that that fact and then to talk about uh the experience that she had had before, in the particular uh way she testified

01:10:22.049 - 01:10:38.620

before Congress and uh the movement of which she was a part, uh which would probably be about uh three or four or five minutes rather than just a few seconds. But if you go through American history and do that, uh uh in some detail, it does

01:10:38.629 - 01:10:56.470

end up and I think it did end up as a somewhat transformed uh course in which uh the fact of women's prominence uh or women's presence uh uh was, was, was concluded you, it was, it was possible to, to do that. And I did, I know

01:10:56.479 - 01:11:13.729

at least some of that. Uh I never taught a course on uh women in USA history. Uh but it was these uh efforts to sort of decide a few things not to teach about because there's only so much you can teach about and some new things

01:11:13.740 - 01:11:35.500

to put in that uh created the course. Um Now I will say there's, there's one reform that um uh I think uh was not so successful. Um But I believe would be as things move on after I retired would be more successful today. Uh Our uh

01:11:35.509 - 01:11:59.580

I decided in our USA uh introductory history course uh to go from uh largely a male, a male presence in the 13 colonies to the male figures at the continental Congresses, to the male administrations up through the civil war, to the male fighters to uh do

01:11:59.589 - 01:12:20.509

something a little bit differently uh that uh interest, great, quite interested me. Um When I discussed the uh colonial era, for example, uh uh I had a sort of a brief lecture segment on the experience of white men in colonial America, followed by the experience of

01:12:20.520 - 01:12:35.640

white women in colonial America and black men in America or black women in America. I might have done uh done the women first, but it was to sort of isolate the group and it's a bit of a departure from um uh uh they, they look at

01:12:35.649 - 01:12:55.979

simply public policy. Uh And then I did the same thing for the 19th century, and it to me, it was kind of uh particularly interesting because in this was still an early stage of the literature on women in USA history. Uh There were some stark differences, for example, the

01:12:56.259 - 01:13:16.330

evidence was already there of a, a limited life span of colonial women, African American women and white women uh to the point where uh the bulk of uh a person's life was involved in uh childbearing and child rearing and child raising. Uh But this had changed

01:13:16.339 - 01:13:35.830

somewhat in the 19th century uh when uh the life span is, is is further along uh for men and women. And uh there's that time when we talk about the ordinary life of ordinary women, uh when uh they have lived beyond uh the experience of childbearing

01:13:35.839 - 01:13:52.410

and intense child raising and what women did with this, uh, to me that, that was really quite fascinating. But, uh, I think some students picked it up and they, they were also looking for cues to what I thought was important. But I also had the kind

01:13:52.419 - 01:14:12.589

of feeling that some of them put down their pencils because you're talking about, uh, ordinary people and not presidents and public figures. Um, and I don't know exactly what to make of that. Uh uh, but, uh, uh even though some of them perhaps took it less

01:14:12.600 - 01:14:31.910

seriously, uh I felt good that it was there in the way that it had, it had not been there before. Uh, and that, that was a good thing. Um, so I, I, I think that's the use of biography. Uh And, um, a good deal of social

01:14:31.919 - 01:14:52.569

history did something to um alter what a perception of history was. Uh And I am aware that uh uh in the late in the 20 years since I've retired, uh, there's uh uh much more sophisticated stuff. Uh, our teaching method is what I would call an

01:14:52.580 - 01:15:11.799

informal lecture. I think that was true throughout the history department. And uh now historians who are uh working with those survey courses still dealing with people who, uh many of whom are going to be social studies teachers or elementary school teachers have a body of uh

01:15:11.810 - 01:15:31.509

somewhat more sophisticated literature to read, to uh inform their, their, their lecture. So it was a good experience for me. And I think, I think there's at least the opportunity uh even more so in the 20 years since I've been retired to um uh continue to

01:15:31.520 - 01:15:54.270

transform history, usa history in particular. Thank you so much, Rod. Um And I've known you a long time and with some of the things you just said it was the first time I'd ever heard them actually, honestly. Uh um And, and I want to mention when

01:15:54.279 - 01:16:15.020

you, you talked about social history that uh within each discipline, there's a kind of hierarchy of, of, of status and social history, I think um is, is not of the highest status. And yet, hopefully, that's changing because that is a way to access women's lives for

01:16:15.029 - 01:16:36.109

sure. And similar things have gone on in, in philosophy as well. But next, next we have Professor Martha Siegel from the math Department. Martha. Would you like to take over? Well, I thank you very much. You can hear me. OK. Uh I thank you very much

01:16:36.120 - 01:17:03.049

for inviting me. Um My contributions are minuscule compared to most of you. But um I'll take five minutes and try to say something about the role of mathematics in changing women's attitudes and the role of women in changing mathematics attitudes. Um I think um I came

01:17:03.060 - 01:17:29.640

to town in 1971 and at that time, um it was just the beginning of the formation of the Association for Women in Mathematics and this organization has grown enormously. It's a national organization. Um I was a charter member. Uh It was quite an incredible group of

01:17:29.649 - 01:17:58.870

people including uh Mary Gray, who was at American University. You may have heard her name already. I'm not sure. Um And it was really um an opportunity for women mathematicians to gain some um status. I think there was frustration, a tremendous amount of frustration that women

01:17:58.879 - 01:18:30.060

mathematicians had been left out in many, many things. I don't put myself into that professional category particularly um because I'm not a research mathematician. Um and I really felt um at home in the organization to a point, they, they really advocated going ahead and maybe giving

01:18:30.069 - 01:18:48.930

up having a family life so you could pursue your research and that would help you to get somewhere. And somehow that was the only way the men in the community were gonna recognize you, but that didn't work for me so well. But um there was also

01:18:48.939 - 01:19:07.830

at the same time, the beginning of the Association for Women in Science A W I S and I don't want to discount their contributions. Um People who are in the audience may know that group even better than the group in mathematics. Um when I came to

01:19:07.839 - 01:19:26.459

town and one of the things that happened rather rapidly is that somehow I got on the Senate, uh the University Center or whatever it was called at the time and women's studies issues curriculum and so on would come to the Senate. And so I feel like

01:19:26.470 - 01:19:52.350

I had a little raised my hand and said yes and argue for it. And, um, also, at the same time, the, um, I would say there was a general movement in the early 70s that allowed many of us to jump on board. So, for example, um,

01:19:52.359 - 01:20:10.240

there was a committee on women in, um, in, uh, what do you call it in a A U P. I keep wanting to say something else. A A U P and we had a local committee on women committee w I believe it was called. And in

01:20:10.250 - 01:20:33.990

fact, I met, I know many of you from that committee. And um there was a joint committee on Women of the Mathematical Association of America and um it was joint with other mathematical organizations in those in those days. Um OK, I don't, I really can't take

01:20:34.000 - 01:20:58.169

too much credit because I somehow I got to be an editor of a journal. I insisted that there, I was part of a group that insisted that all the editors be chosen for their wisdom and not for their gender. And uh I did actually succeed um

01:20:58.520 - 01:21:26.609

another woman editor. So I wasn't the first, but the Mathematical Association of America which published this journal was very, very intentional. The board of governors on which I sat for many years would not approve the board of editors unless it was diverse. It took a while

01:21:26.620 - 01:21:47.720

to get the African Americans included, but the women were included during my years and afterwards, of course, even more. So there was an a seminal article by John Earnest, whom I happen to know because he was one of my professors at the University of Rochester and

01:21:47.729 - 01:22:09.919

graduate school. And the article in mathematics magazine, which is the journal I eventually was edit edited in 1976. Um the article is called Mathematics and Sex. What a good title, of course. So everybody read it and I hope that you get a chance to read it, you can

01:22:09.930 - 01:22:30.370

look it up, it is online, you can find it and it was seminal in the sense that it pointed out a great deal of the disparity in what students were doing and what professional people were doing and how they were shutting doors on the activities of

01:22:30.379 - 01:23:00.129

women. Um in Baltimore, uh Pamela Benbow was at Hopkins and she was a graduate student of Julian Stanley and I think Lynn Fox and she was studying the mathematically precocious youth and they were doing a lot of studies based on S A T scores. They would

01:23:00.140 - 01:23:26.819

choose these brilliant kids to put them in summer programs and give them challenging problems to solve and so on. And of course, they were using test scores and they weren't getting very many women to qualify. And um, so there was an issue there and Kala Den,

01:23:26.839 - 01:23:54.180

but still publishes a lot. So I would recommend again that you go to take a look at that. I did do a conference. Maybe I would call it a um an awareness meeting with pre-K through 12 teachers about textbooks and what was happening in school. And I really

01:23:54.189 - 01:24:19.709

wanted very much to help them approach textbooks and problem solving. So they understood that there were gender implications and then be tried to point out that part of the disparity was that girls were being excluded from the kinds of problems that they were interested in. I

01:24:19.720 - 01:24:42.720

have to say also that I think we've fixed a lot of that in the math department with um bringing in girls to research projects that involved more than uh engineering problems. I think most of the girls who were more interested in social issues and um they,

01:24:42.729 - 01:25:02.450

that kind of grabbed them right away. Um I don't wanna take up any more time because I know we're really close to the end and I wanna hear, I actually really wanna hear Ashley hear what she has to say. So I have a piece of paper

01:25:02.459 - 01:25:23.049

with some references on it and I gave them to Joanne and if anybody wants to, they can either contact me or Joanne. Thank you. I love you all. You did a great job. Thank you, Martha. Uh So many issues. Uh This is kind of overwhelming actually

01:25:23.060 - 01:25:44.879

this whole panel. So Ashley Pad Diaz, we'd like to hear about the uh the archive that you're working on. Yeah, so I am going to share my screen because I have some things that I wanted to share. Uh But so very quickly, we are have been

01:25:44.890 - 01:26:02.810

engaged, I would say for the last few years with ramping up for this 50th anniversary. Um And we've been starting to work um within the last couple months very closely with the current chair of um the Department Kate Wilkinson and also some students. So for those

01:26:02.819 - 01:26:18.189

of you who are not familiar with our special collections in university archives, we are located on the fifth floor of the library and I will put a shout out because we currently have a, an exhibit about the history of women's studies that my colleague uh Jay

01:26:18.200 - 01:26:36.569

Allen has put together, but we are not just a site for storing old information, right? We are also trying to actively engage with our students, our faculty, our community members and allow them to kind of dive into that material and give it a future as well.

01:26:36.709 - 01:26:52.895

Um So, with that in mind, we also have been working really hard to develop more content for our digital archives. Um So if you go to um archives dot Towson dot E D U, uh you'll be able to see what we have digitized so far and

01:26:52.904 - 01:27:13.359

as well as what digital records are coming into us from across campus because we know that um everything is being created on a computer these days, right? So one aspect of this digital collection will be uh very soon a women's studies area. Um So this is

01:27:13.370 - 01:27:30.470

uh a prototype that my colleague M E L Brown has been working on. And it is one aspect of this overall digital archives. So part of this project is trying to identify what we have currently in the archives, but also the gaps. Um and we are

01:27:30.479 - 01:27:47.890

reaching out as much as we can and welcoming um as much as we can, ideas and records and memories and anything that you can share to make this history richer. Um So we are actively digitizing records to build out this digital collection. Um So if you

01:27:47.899 - 01:28:03.250

have things that you are not ready to part with, but you would perhaps let us digitize and return back to you. Um We are working as I said with two current students um to learn more about the history and put together a timeline and hopefully to

01:28:03.259 - 01:28:22.979

conduct some oral histories um and put together some feature videos about certain parts of the 50 year history. Um And we will be flushing out this digital collections web page which will be live um pretty soon currently available. Um So if you were to go to

01:28:22.990 - 01:28:40.279

our digital collections at archives dot Towson dot E D U and click on blow browse all materials. Uh There is a facet much like if you are shopping um say on Amazon. So you can select a collection as the women's studies, which I believe is one

01:28:40.290 - 01:28:58.250

of the very last alphabetically. And you will get roughly 50 pieces of material that we have digitized and loaded so far. So primarily it's the on our minds newsletter that Joanne mentioned earlier, as well as those two department histories, I believe. And so more is being

01:28:58.259 - 01:29:18.890

added as we are able to digitize, um and put some descriptive information there. So keep an eye out. Um But ultimately, again, I would, I will plug the fact that our history will only be as rich as the information we have. So please consider sharing this,

01:29:18.899 - 01:29:33.049

this video is going to be added. But anything else if you would like to reach out? Um There are three Ds in my last name. Um I'll just put that out there, but we are happy to speak with you and see how we can partner uh

01:29:33.060 - 01:29:59.049

to make this digital archives that much richer and more complete. I'm gonna stop sharing. Hm Ashley. Thank you. I had no idea. It was as far along as, as it is. And in one of those photos, we could see Leah Schofield who was for many, many

01:29:59.060 - 01:30:21.770

years, the director of the Women's Studies program. Uh she passed away a couple of years ago. She had moved to the Midwest Women's Center, I believe. Did I, you said women's studies? I believe it was Women's Center I'm sorry, I was yes Women's Center. I was

01:30:21.779 - 01:30:43.379

looking at something on my screen and got confused. Thank you, Annette. Um Is there I, I was also just reading a comment from if I can find it from Emily Parker who is a current faculty member uh in the joint appointment that I had philosophy and

01:30:43.390 - 01:31:01.810

women's studies. And she says I'm a current health faculty member serving in the position originated by Joanne. I just want to say thank you for this amazing panel. I've learned so much and I'm humbled by all of the work that came before me. Many thanks, Henry

01:31:01.819 - 01:31:23.160

Chen sent, sends his greetings. Also, John mclucas and um Tracy Miller and Tracy. I don't think that you can ask a direct question, but I'm not sure. I don't think we have that system set up here. We actually do. Do you want me to allow her

01:31:23.169 - 01:31:42.339

to talk? Sure. Is she still there, Tracy? Are you there? I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. OK. Well, um I won't take a lot of time, but I have to say it's lovely to see Sarah whom I have not seen in forever. And I, I

01:31:42.350 - 01:32:07.959

think you're in Colorado somewhere, right? That's where she is. Mhm. I wanted to add one little thing if I could, I was hoping that I would have time, but I, I just want to point out that um the Math Association of America has been collecting um

01:32:08.740 - 01:32:35.669

documentaries so to speak. Uh from uh mathematicians, women mathematicians included a large extent called living proof. And these are testimonies that are available online if everything is free, it's at MA A dot org. And if you just look for living proof, they add to them regularly

01:32:36.029 - 01:33:00.310

and they're wonderful stories of people tell about their careers. And I think students can benefit tremendously from understanding the role of a role model and knowing that other people have been discouraged in various ways and they've overcome these things. So I just want to put a

01:33:00.319 - 01:33:19.939

plug in for that because women need that. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. And Teresa Jenkins is with us now as, as our incredible, wonderful helper and she says we can go, we can go on for a few minutes um beyond five. So I wanted to add

01:33:20.069 - 01:33:41.129

a couple of things of my own personal uh recollections. I remember the day that I opened the inner campus envelope. Uh and uh I was, was cheering them. And uh as usual, I had been sending on the um the try copy. Of course, this was all

01:33:41.140 - 01:34:00.589

paper culture, uh try copy versions of declarations of major and declarations of minor. This was before we had the major. But uh these were declarations of minor and, and our minor was, was quite uh popular. Anyway, there was just a little post it on top of

01:34:00.600 - 01:34:20.500

this group saying uh women's studies doesn't have a minor end of story. Well, of course, I was not happy to see that, uh, called over at the registrar's office quickly and said, what are you talking about? We have quite a few minor and we've had a

01:34:20.509 - 01:34:37.560

minor for quite a few years. And the person said, well, um, the university system of Maryland or maybe it was m, he said, says that you can't have a minor unless you have a major and you don't have a major yet, so you can't have a

01:34:37.569 - 01:34:56.549

minor. Um Well, I quickly let students know about this and other faculty members and evidently, students went over to the Provost office. Uh I don't know how many were there, but it was, it was a few at least. And the provost at that point was Bob

01:34:56.560 - 01:35:19.399

Cort, who later became our president, who later became the chancellor of the whole system of the US M and um after he knew how upset many of us were, there was a change somehow in, in university systems policy and we were able to have a minor

01:35:19.410 - 01:35:39.000

again. Uh One other thing I remember uh in teaching my women in philo, my uh feminist philosophy course, that one of the students who was uh very much involved in the peace movement and was actually living in Jonah House, which is where the Barrigan lived and

01:35:39.009 - 01:35:58.189

Elizabeth and Callister uh here in Baltimore. Um she announced um her first name was Betsy and she announced that she was going to the women's Pentagon action. This was in 1980. I looked it up last night. Couldn't remember the year. And she said she might be,

01:35:58.200 - 01:36:15.569

um, missing from class for a couple of days because they were going to do civil disobedience. And, uh, she had decided she would do that and, you know, their lawyers had spoken with the DC officials and everything was fine and, you know, at most she would

01:36:15.580 - 01:36:31.740

miss a class or two. Well, I didn't see her for two weeks and when she finally came back, she said, and, and you can read this in some of the online information about the women's Pentagon action. Uh It turned out that even though they thought they

01:36:31.750 - 01:36:50.100

had arrangements and, and a mutual understanding about this with DC officials that in fact, um 100 and 14 of them were arrested and were many of them were simply put on a bus. She said they didn't even know where they were going. They were taken to

01:36:50.109 - 01:37:11.020

Alderson Prison, Federal Prison in West Virginia and uh treated not very well, but uh certainly the whole thing was quite a surprise, but she did eventually come back to class. And uh was, she was glad she did what she did. She said that they, the women

01:37:11.029 - 01:37:30.500

that were arrested that day um began to get to know the person, the other prisoners and that it was um actually a pretty wonderful experience all told. So we have had some amazing students over the years. And if does anybody else want to make a comment

01:37:30.509 - 01:37:52.930

before we, I'd like to answer Tracy's question about where I am now. Yes, Tracy. I'm in Colorado. I'm in Southwest Colorado on a mesa called Log Hill mesa above Ridgeway. Looking out on the beautiful San Juan mountains and surrounded by lots of wildlife, which I greatly

01:37:52.939 - 01:38:15.890

enjoy. And I see comments from Pat Alt and Ron Mala and Henry Chen. Uh Thanking us for the panel and saying that they enjoyed it. So, um I'm happy that uh we had as big an audience as we did and it'll be recorded and I know

01:38:15.899 - 01:38:36.279

that some people who weren't able to watch today will be, will be a, will be watching it at some point. So thanks to everybody who participated and um and thank you Joanne for putting it all together. Exactly. Thank you very much. I was just happy that

01:38:36.890 - 01:38:55.819

the tech aspect worked and, and, and uh thank you. Thank you, Teresa and Andrew. OK. Thank you, Joanne. This has been very interesting. Good. OK. Hope keep up the good work, everybody and goodbye for now.