Women's Studies Committee meeting minutes, April 9, 1997

Minutes: Women's Studies Committee Meeting April 9, 1997 Present: Coulter, Doering, Edgington, Gissendanner, Mower, Pilardi, Romero, Rothstein, Vanfossen, Wangari (others?1) A Announcements: Cindy Gissendanner asked that we publicize the new course, "Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies" which was not listed in the fall 97 schedule booklet. Complete info.: IDIS 101 .001 TR, 9:30-10:45, Gissendanner, C. Jo-Ann announced ongoing problems with schedule booklet visibility for the Women's Studies Program (interdisciplinary), and for any "IP's," i.e., Interdisciplinary Programs. We discussed possible solutions. Business: We discussed official terms by which departmental members of the Women's Studies Program can be identified; "Affiliates" cannot be used officially, at least not yet. (Annette Chappell has written a new policy on this, and it is making its way through the levels of bureaucracy.) Jo-Ann stated that the major purpose of the meeting was to complete the formation of the new Women's Studies Steering Committee, a process we had begun last year. Earlier decisions had been made last year to set up a number of other committees; these decisions are reported in the minutes of the Nov. and Dec. 1996 meetings. The consensus was that we needed to discuss related structural issues, before completing the formation of the Steering Committee. We decided on the following: Women's Studies Core Committee: shall consist of all faculty with "WMST"- designated lines or half-lines. At present this includes only these faculty: Beris, Pilardi, Wangari. This committee was created to acknowledge the faculty hired into the Women's Studies Program as its own faculty. Women's Studies Program Steering Committee: shall consist of nine (9) members, drawn from the following: those hired to teach courses for the WMST Program (full-time, half-time, joint appointments, adjunct faculty); those hired by other departments but who teach courses approved in the WMST Program-the people we recently termed "Affiliates"; 1 We didn't pass around a sign-up sheet; I have constructed this list from memory; hope I didn't leave anyone out.