History

Growth of the Program

In 1989, the program had a sparse 5 minors. By 1993, there were 53. For this, we owe many thanks to the hard work of Dr. Martha Reineke, who directed the program from 1990 to 1994, at which point she developed and implemented a Masters program in Women's Studies and directed it until 1999. Additionally, Dr. Reineke established CROW Forum, (Current Research on Women) among a myriad of other programs.

Through the direction of Drs. Victoria DeFrancisco, Annette Lynch, Susan Hill, Cynthia Goatley, and Phyllis Baker from the late 1990s and into the new century, the Women's Studies program was extremely active. Students from the program visited Beijing and Washington D.C. Inspired by the conversations at the UNIs Beijing conference on women, students at UNI participated in an interactive national satellite conference to determine the direction of the struggle for women's rights. The program viewed the series "Women on Fridays," which provided a forum for discussion and community. In October 2000, the University of Northern Iowa Women's Studies program was awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to fund a 20-month project establishing proactive programs to reduce violence against women on campus. The programs focused on prevention rather than victim services. The programming established two staff positions that focused on preventing gender-based violence. The project was initiated by former Women's Studies graduate student Amymarie Moser, who approached Women's Studies Director, Annette Lynch, with a series of ideas about how violence could be prevented on the UNI campus. Many of those ideas made their way into the grant proposal. Dr. Lynch added the emphasis on working with men which continues today. The lists of accomplishments go on.

Recent History

In January 2005, the Women's Studies Advisory Board voted to change the name of the Women's Studies program to the Women's and Gender Studies program.  This change reflects more clearly the current focus of the Program in terms of teaching and faculty research, as well as the future direction of the Program. The name change took affect in the Fall of 2006. Finally, in 2006, a full time director position was created, and the program changed its name to Women's and Gender Studies, as it continues to evolve along the needs of its students and current research in the field of feminism.

The Women's and Gender Studies Master's of Arts program was required to undergo restructuring in the Spring of 2012. This restructuring included adding two applied tracks to our graduate program, with focuses in gender and violence prevention and gender and wellness, in addition to the traditional thesis track. Since the Fall 2013 implementation of the new program, we have graduated four students from the new program with the first cohort from the restructured graduating in May 2015. The Fall 2015 cohort consisted of four new MA students and one additional added in Spring 2016. The Fall 2016 cohort had added an additional five MA students to our program!

Using Academic year 18-19 data, there were 46 minors enrolled. The creation of an introductory course in Spring 2015 permanently dedicated to LGBTQ Studies was essential in the creation of the WGS new minor: Studies in Sexuality, Women, and Gender (SWAG). SWAG became the new minor for WGS in the Fall 2016 semester.