Students Enroll: Planning and Development Continue

In the 1974-1975 academic year there were fifty major and certificate students enrolled in the newly-approved Women's Studies Program.¹⁴ Cathy Portuges's position changed to full time, though this was still not a faculty line, as she had not yet finished her PhD. Also that fall, Arlene Avakian helped start a Graduate Women's Studies working group, which successfully organized a well-attended daylong conference, but failed to create an ongoing network. It seemed that women graduate students were already too overwhelmed with their own work and lives to commit to such a project. In November, 1975, the first issue of the Women's Studies Newsletter was published: two yellow sheets of paper folded in half, with a handwritten title at the top, “Women’s Studies Newsletter Vol. 1 #1.” In December of that year the Academic Matters Council granted a one-year extension to the Women's Studies Pilot Program so that it would have more time to become established. Another extension was granted a year later.

A Women's Studies Retreat was held late in 1975 to address, among other things, concerns brought by lesbian students about their experiences in the classroom and inclusion of lesbian sexuality in the curriculum. According to Dale Melcher, it was students who brought lesbian sexuality into the spotlight because faculty members who were working to establish the program within the university felt that it was not a safe subject for them to broach.¹⁵

In the early years of the program, the Policy Board, the Women’s Studies program’s main decision-making body, was open to the public; anyone could attend meetings. Notes were sent out via campus mail and kept interested faculty and students apprised of developments. This structure exemplified the founders’ desire that Women’s Studies belong to the community. But it became clear early on that in order to have continuity in their conversations from meeting to meeting, they needed a consistent group of people to show up. Later, when Women’s Studies had grown from a team of just four TAs to having its own faculty and staff whose careers depended on the decisions of the board, they decided that the governance structure needed to change once again. In order to equitably value the labor of Women’s Studies faculty and encourage professional reciprocity, they decided that professors with appointments outside the department should never outnumber Women’s Studies own faculty and staff on the Policy Board. Throughout this period, and to this day, the Women’s Studies program at UMass has made student and staff involvement in decision-making processes a priority, which is not the norm in other university departments. And while the department now has five and a half full time equivalent faculty, it continues to rely on the generous donation of time and effort by faculty in other departments who serve on departmental committees, even chairing them; sponsor undergraduate students; and serve on graduate students' committees. The work of these faculty members is done as an overload to the service they do in their own departments and is generally not credited towards tenure, promotion, or merit.

¹⁴ Special Report of the Academic Matters Council concerning The Women’s Studies Program, Faculty Senate Doc. No. 78-032, March 9, 1978, p. 5.

¹⁵ Dale Melcher interview, 11/8/10.