The Graduate Program is Born and Organizing Continues

In 1993, after several years of grappling with how to implement a Women’s Studies graduate program, Ann Ferguson issued a “Draft of a Proposal for a 5 College Graduate Program in Women’s Studies.” In 1995, when Ann Ferguson became Women’s Studies director, she continued to channel a great deal of energy into getting a program up and running. In 1996, with the support of Dean Lee Edwards and Graduate Dean Charlena Seymour, Ann Ferguson and Marta Calas (SOM) cotaught a graduate seminar in order to lay some groundwork for the full program. Many years of thinking and hard work paid off in 1997 when the Advanced Feminist Studies Graduate Certificate program admitted its first cohort of ten students. Greatly aiding the efforts to institute the Graduate Program was the position of Graduate Program Coordinator held by Nancy Patteson. Ann managed to have this position, originally a Research Assistant, converted to a 03 staff assistant (without benefits) and finally in 1998 it became a fully-funded professional position, recognized by the SEIU.⁴⁶ Having Nancy Patteson work with the Graduate Program was pivotal in making possible the long-held vision for a graduate component of the Women's Studies Program. Jan Raymond served as the first Graduate Program Director.⁴⁷

Ferguson was also tireless in organizing conferences and talks. In November, 1995, she worked with a faculty organizing committee including John Bracey, Manisha Sinha, Arlene Avakian, Joyce Berkman, and Horace Boyer to plan the conference “Black Studies/Women’s Studies: 1981 and Today.” It served as an opportunity to revisit the work of the FIPSE funded faculty development project of the early eighties. The conference keynote was Beverly Guy-Sheftall, founder of the Women’s Resource and Research Center and Professor at Spelman College and Emory University. Linda Hillenbrand and Nicola Poser, a graduate assistant, provided vital administrative support.

Ann also initiated “Women of Vision in Action,” a reunion of UMass women activists, which was held in September 1997 and was collaboratively organized with the Everywoman’s Center to celebrate the twenty-five year anniversaries of both EWC and the Council on the Status of Women. Beverly Guy-Sheftall returned to Amherst once again to give a keynote address, “Feminist Activism and the Academy.” About 200 people came from across the country to reflect on the activism they had participated in while they were undergraduate and graduate students at the university. Participants reconnected with old friends and recounted the founding years of these critical pieces of women’s history on campus. In order to help sustain the Women’s Studies department and the Everywoman’s Center through the budgetary uncertainty that seemed to be an ongoing struggle in public higher education, two new organizations were formed at this reunion, Friends of Women’s Studies and Friends of Everywoman’s Center.⁴⁸ Over the years that Ann was Director, the program sponsored many lectures series, talks by faculty on and off campus. She and Nancy Patteson were also involved in the New England Land Grand Council of University Women which held a conference at UMass in 1998. Part of the work of the Council was to develop Vision 2000, a response to the American Council on Education's Commission on Women in Higher Education recommendation that every campus develop an agenda for women. Written collaboratively by the Council as a general vision statement proposing recommendations to address issues of gender inequity at the six New England land grant institutions, Vision 2000 was reviewed by UMass Faculty Senate Councils and Committees and the nine recommendations were endorsed, in principle, by the Faculty Senate in April 1998.

⁴⁶ Eric Hamako, “Notes on Women’s Studies AFS Graduate Certificate Program,” 3/25/08.

⁴⁷ WOST newsletter, Fall 1997, p. 2.

⁴⁸ WOST Newsletter, Spring 1998, p. 1.