Letter from Elaine Hedges to Joyce Schwartz

Women's Studies Dr. Joyce Schwartz, Chair University Curriculum Committee Towson State University Dear Dr. Schwartz: The Women's Studies Committee recently reviewed the provisions under which the Women's Studies program was established in 1972 by President James Fisher and Vice-President Kenneth Shaw. Those provisions, in addition to charging us with the responsibility for creating interdisciplinary Women's Studies courses, mandated that we work to encourage the introduction of materials on women into existing courses wherever relevant. In 1975 the Statement of Goals (VA3) established for Towson reiterated the University's commitment to the inclusion of materials on women in the academic curriculum in the interests of equity. Until now the Committee, and I as Coordinator, have worked to create new courses, both interdisciplinary and departmental; and we have worked informally to provide relevant materials on women for inclusion in traditional courses and to disseminate these and encourage their use. Now that the entire University is engaged in restructuring, however, it seems necessary that we find more formal ways of fulfilling our mandate. The informal networks we have established are likely to be less effective when departments we work with are separated into different schools or colleges; and our ongoing responsibility to encourage the inclusion of materials on women into traditional courses may also be harder to pursue. The University Curriculum Committee itself will soon be engaged in defining its role under the new structure and governance, and that role will presumably include supervising the Curriculum Committees of the individual schools and colleges, as well as the GUR requirements. We would therefore like at this time formally to request that Women's Studies be given formal representation on the restructured University Curriculum Committee, to participate in its deliberations whenever those are relevant to our mandate and to the University Goals. Nationwide, we are entering a period when colleges and universities are beginning to engage in "mainstreaming," that is, introducing Women's Studies materials broadly throughout the entire curriculum. The Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Organization of American· Historians, Modern Language Association, and Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education are some of the organizations that are funding such work at schools like Wheaton and Oberlin Colleges, Montana State University, and the Uhiversity of Maine. We see representation on the University Curriculum Committee as a useful and indeed essential step in our efforts at Towson to keep our own curriculum abreast of this important current development. Sincerely yours, Elaine Hedges, Coordinator Women's Studies cc Patricia Plante William Reuling Edward Holmes Annette Flower EH/ach