The loss of five women from tenured/tenure-track positions, as well as the only woman Cabinet member, when added to our already discouraging numbers, must be seen as a crisis for the campus. While the named reasons for each woman's departure vary, the fact that most of the women leaving this year are not going to other comparable faculty positions suggests a trend for women to leave Albion at any price. This pattern is consistent with departures in other years.
Why are women leaving Albion? Informal discussions among faculty members indicate a number of issues.
I. Policy Issues:
II. Climate:
These issues cannot be left to each department to address. It is not just up to individual departments to "take care" of "their" women. We are too small a campus for that attitude to be productive and many of the issues women raise are broad and institutionalized . It will have to be a campus-wide effort if women, as well as all other "others," are to feel valued here.
While these concerns, along with those raised on the Status of Women Report and the memo of 12-11-95, have been brought to our attention, we suspect we do not have the full picture. We had a plan to work with the Assistant to the Provost, Mrs. Kondelik, on a faculty survey this past Spring, but time pressures forced us to postpone this work. We will make this assessment a priority for this Fall to be able to more fully determine what we can do to increase our retention and morale, especially among women. With the conclusion of that study we need a commitment that we all will work to implement the changes needed.
After five years of the Women's Studies Concentration and ten years of the Women's Center, the needs of the students committed to Women's Studies and women's issues continue to evolve. Certain findings are not surprises. For example, that English and Sociology are the most frequent majors among Women's Studies students is consistent with national findings. Nor is surprising that our graduates find employment in Women's Studies related areas such as working on domestic violence issues. Some unexpected developments include the number of students choosing to major in Women's Studies via an individually designed major, the number of male students interested in Women's Studies, and the number of students outside the formal concentration completing feminist studies theses.
There are, at this time, no significant problems with the concentration except the continuing problem of staffing the core courses (see below). The breadth of gender courses offered at Albion provide our students with a strong curriculum. That we are doing a good job of preparing our students was validated this year when two of our graduates were accepted into graduate Women's Studies programs.
Nevertheless we can strengthen our program. A major priority for this year involves building a community among the students and faculty in Women's Studies. To this end, we anticipate formal and informal gatherings of the students and the Women's Studies faculty, as well as working with students to reestablish and strengthen S.E.A.R.C.H. We will promote networking between Women's Studies students undertaking internships, directed studies and honors and departmental theses. From these meetings we will develop more specific goals for supporting our students.
At the end of the 1994-95 academic year we thought we had an adequate two year plan for staffing women's studies courses. Unfortunately several factors have changed and we are once again hustling to cover these courses. At this time we are in the process of hiring Laura Behling, who is A.B.D. from Claremont, to teach IDY 106 this coming semester. Trisha Franzen will teach Feminist Theory this Spring, while Dianne Guenin-Lelle teaches IDY 106. For 1997-98, Trisha will teach IDY 106 in the Fall. The arrangements after that semester must still be negotiated. Over the last few years, the English Department, with the support of the Provost's Office, has freed one of their faculty once a year to teach either IDY 106 (Drs. Lockyer or Lamb) or IDY 360 (Feminist Theory- Dr. Collar). Anthro-Soc freed Dr. Sudderth to teach IDY 106 this last semester. With both Drs. Lamb and Sudderth leaving, we will have to discuss new arrangements. We trust that the support we have had from the Provost's Office, specifically the commitment that departments would be able to hire replacements for faculty released to teach Women's Studies (or Honors courses), will continue.
The Anna Howard Shaw Women's Center was founded to be a link between Albion College and the women in Albion and the surrounding communities. Fulfilling this aspect of its mission has taken a number of forms over the years from sustaining support groups for adult women through, most recently, our sexual assault services and our programs for K-12 students. This last area, programs for school-age girls, is one that has received important scholarly attention in the last five years. We would like, at this time, to consider developing a more long-term approach in this area.
Any successful long-term project requires solid planning. This will be our community goal for the coming year. We plan to work with campus and community groups to assess the programs which are available for Albion girls, identify the most urgent needs, develop a program to address those needs, and research funding for such a project.
The Women's Studies Committee optimistically started this Year of Celebration of Albion Women by working on five-year goals. This turned out to be a most difficult year with many commitments, unexpected student and faculty issues, and changes. With the rest of the college we face a time of transition. Bille Wickre's report will more fully discuss the work of the Women's Studies Committee.
Albion continues to have a strong presence with the GLCA Women's Studies Committee and the National Women's Studies Association. Bille Wickre and Trisha Franzen remain the campus' representatives to the GLCA committee, while also serving appropriately on the conference planning subcommittee. These commitments involved four off-campus meetings over the last year, with two on-campus planning sessions, culminating in the GLCA Tenth Anniversary Women's Studies Conference held here in April. Albion was well represented at that conference with seven faculty members presenting papers or workshops, along with a number of Albion students, staff and community people. We were pleased to have had President and Mrs. Vulgamore present both days, acknowledging their long interest in the GLCA Women's Studies Committee.
Drs. Franzen and Wickre also attended the National Women's Studies Conference at Skidmore College this June. Trisha presented a paper, "Contested Identities: Middle-class U.S. women and lesbian identities, 1920-1940." Jeanne-Marie Hemond, Albion ‘90, of Operation Grad, Battle Creek, joined Bille and Trisha, for a session on the linkages between Albion College's Women's Studies and the greater Albion community. We discussed the "Tubs Project," the work of the Gender Equity Committee of the Calhoun Area Technology Center, and the Women's History Projects of the Albion Public Schools. Trisha had attended the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, held at UNC-Chapel Hill, the previous week.
Along with Dr. Len Berkey, Drs. Wickre and Franzen represented Albion at the AAC&U American Commitments Conference in Philadelphia in November. This four day conference was demanding and intensive, very much an extended workshop where we were all expected to work together on our diversity initiatives. Unfortunately we don't really have a forum here at Albion to share with the rest of the college what we learned at this gathering.
Trisha Franzen's book, Spinsters and Lesbians: Independent Womanhood in the United States (New York University Press), came out in January. At the invitation of the Friends of the Library, she gave a talk on her book on February 29th. Additionally her article, "Differences and Identities: Feminism and the Albuquerque Lesbian Community," will appear in The Signs Reader II. She has been asked to contribute three pieces to The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality: Lesbian Histories and Culture. She will also present at the Midwest Modern Language Association in November. The scholarly achievements of the other members of the Women's Studies Committee are discussed in their departments' reports.
With the support of a grant from the Faculty Development Committee, the AHS Women's Center has started the process of gathering the history of women at Albion. In conjunction with our Year of Celebration and Anna Howard Shaw Week, we began video and audio tapings of panels and interviews concerning women here. Our panels with faculty emeritae, community leaders and the founders of Women's Studies went well. The grant covered the cost of a high quality video camera, a transcription machine, tapes and transcribing costs.
Through the History of Women in the U.S. class this Spring, and in coalition with the AAUW, women's history came to all the Albion Public Schools in the form of Project Storyteller. Albion College students worked in teams to develop age appropriate women's history activities for all the classes who volunteered for this project. This was another component of our history collecting. Both parts of this project will continue.
Women faculty and members of the Women's Studies Committee are disproportion-ately involved in campus and off-campus service activities. The only regular faculty committee not having a member of the Women's Studies Committee was RAC. Both Drs Wickre and Franzen continued to serve on PACMA during this productive though challenging year. Trisha also was part of the committee developing a Common First-Year Program. Drs. Wickre and Franzen were SOAR Faculty.
In the larger Albion community, Trisha was elected President of the Board of Directors of the Johnson Child Care and Development Center. This was her fourth year on that Board. For the second year she was a member of the Gender Equity Committee of the Calhoun Area Technology Center, working on the middle-school programs. She was elected to a regular seat on the Albion Board of Education, serving on the facilities subcommittee, the core team, the hiring committee for the high school principal, and as the alternate for CASBMA. She also worked with the AAUW as the women's issues chair and will this coming year be membership co-chair with Dr. Miriam Daly. She also continued as assistant coach for AYSO.
However, as a result of our second survivors' panel, a number of students asked to start a survivors' support group. Co-sponsored by the Counseling Center, the Women's Center and S.H.A.R.E., this group met consistently throughout the second semester and will continue this coming year. It is unfortunate that we will lose both members of our Counseling Center. Terri Belville was a great assistant to Dr. Easy Zimmerman. Dr. Zimmerman was a strong and consistent supporter of much of the work of the Women's Center. He will be hard to replace.
The Women's Center, the Women's Studies Committee, and PACMA have initiated the campus discussions concerning gender and racial diversity. We have tried to bring to the attention of the entire campus community the needs of the women here, along with suggestions for changes. But these can not remain marginal concerns handled by committees viewed as outside the mainstream of faculty processes. Attacks from certain student groups this year added debilitating and time consuming crises to an already challenging academic year. While we will continue to assume this responsibility of identifying areas in which we need change, we need to know we have more than token support from other sectors of the campus. These issues must become part of every discussion here, especially in our searches for President and other cabinet members.
Questions, Comments, Concerns??? E-Mail Dr. Franzen.