ITROW: INSTITUTE FOR TEACHING
AND RESEARCH ON WOMEN IS
ESTABLISHED AT TOWSON
by Beth Vanfossen
Editor's Note: Dr. Beth E. Vanfosssen, the new Director
of the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, comes
to Towson from the SUNY at Brockport where she was Directorof
Women's Studies, Professor of Sociology, and Associate
Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. She was a
founding member of the State University of New York's statewide
Women's Studies Council, and a member of its executive
committee. She also served as Co-Project Director of a curriculum
transf onnation project designed to train faculty for
consultant work on the campuses of the SUNY system.
The Institute for Teaching and Research on Women was
officially put into operation at Towson State University in
the Fall 1990 with my appointment as full-time Director, the
furnishing of an office with computer and desks, and the
employment of two graduate assistants, Elena Russo and
Martha Thresher.
The Institute is the natural outgrowth of Towson's
Women's Studies Program and is the latest development in
a series of successful initiatives for women at Towson State
University, including the creation of a Women's Studies
program in the early 1970's, two major curriculum integration
projects funded by grants from the Fund for the Improvement
of Post-Secondary Education, the hosting of the
1989 annual meeting of the National Women's Studies Association,
and the earning of high national ranking as a
campus which values and encourages women. The Institute
was founded to promote research on women and the integration
of scholarship on women into the curriculum. It
fosters research by:
• encouraging collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches
to research on women;
• providing information on funding sources and assistance
in grant-writing for research on women;
• sponsoring seminars, conferences, and workshops related
to research on women.
The diverse research interests of ITROW research collaborators
are organized around two domains:
• social structures and institutions (work, family,
government, and education, for example);
A newsletter of the
Women's Studies Program
Towson State Unviersity
Baltimore, MD 21204
Spring 1991 Vol. V, No.1
• culture (ideas, language, beliefs).
For both domains, research which leads to or suggests
practical or policy applications is encouraged. Locallybased
research projects build upon Towson's proximity to
Baltimore and the numerous U Diversity-community ties
that already exist.
Current research projects include a study of the
amelioration of the processes of aging with a special focus
on minority women, the cross-national effects of economic
development on the status of women, and women's ways of
writing. Future projects will focus on occupations and
working conditions, women and health care, teaching
mathematics and science to high school students, and intervention
in patterns of relationship violence.
Continued Page 5
CURRICULUM TRANSFORMATION
AT THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
by Sara Coulter
Towson State University and five Maryland community
colleges (Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Catonsville,
Montgomery, and Prince Georges) have completed a twoyear
FIPSE funded project to integrate material by and
about women into the curriculum. Beginning in 1988, the
project provided workshops and consultants for forty-five
community college faculty in the humanities, social sciences,
natural sciences, and fme arts. Faculty met in five
discipline-centered workshops on the participating campuses.
The project concluded with a state-wide meeting of
community college faculty at which members of the project
presented its results, summarizing their course revisions
and the process of change which they had undergone in the
workshops.
A book produced by the project, Community College
Guide to Curriculum Change, describes the project's organization
and procedures. It contains overviews, a discussion
of the community college as a setting for curriculum
change, an essay on feminist pedagogy, descriptions of
workshop activity, selected bibliography and revised syllabi,
and a set of eleven essays by project faculty members
describing the process of their personal and professional
change. Continued Page 6
