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Notes from the Director Comings and Goings Donors Techno News Lounge |
Addenda to Course Guide AAUW Undergrad News Undergrad Opportunities Graduate News |
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Notes from the Director Comings and Goings Donors Techno News Lounge |
Addenda to Course Guide AAUW Undergrad News Undergrad Opportunities Graduate News |
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Greetings to the UMass Womens Studies community in the real first year of the new millennium! This is my
last year as Director of the Program and I will be sad to leave after 6 years here. However, I feel that
I have accomplished most of the goals I set for myself. The new graduate certificate program is
thriving, as is the undergraduate program. We have established a regular lecture series and forums of
faculty members associated with the Program that continue to further our goal of a feminist
interdisciplinary teaching and research community on campus. Our students are successful, some as
innovative activists and others win many academic and service awards. We are searching for a new
mid-career tenure-track faculty position for the first time in a number of years, whose appointment
should bring new energy and direction to us. At the same time we have the assurance that at least one of
the incoming faculty fellows at the Five College WOST Research Center will teach a course on race, gender
and globalization issues for our UMass WOST program next fall.
In the midst of these hopeful developments for the program, there are also some clouds. General concerns about the overall UMass budget in the future, due to the state tax cut, make our hopes for future expansion of the faculty uncertain. We are still working out a proposal for an M.A. degree in Womens Studies with a specialization in Race, Gender and Globalization, but it may have to be shelved due to budgetary concerns.
To ensure that our curriculum program remains strong and up to date, the Womens Studies Executive Committee has decided that it will do a curricular review of our undergraduate major and minor course requirements. The core faculty has met and will propose a process of surveys and discussions to involve students, faculty, including associated faculty in other departments, and staff. We expect the process to take about a year, since we want to give our new faculty hire, coming in fall 2001, a chance to participate. We may follow this up with an evaluation of our graduate program the following year.
To sum up, I remain hopeful that we can consolidate the achievements of the past and weather the problems
that continuing budget cuts bring. Hopefully we can do this, since our commitment remains firm and we
have an excellent and dedicated staff and faculty to face whatever challenges the future brings.
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