News

  • 08 Mar 2011 5:40 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Martha Ackmann, Mount Holyoke lecturer in gender studies and author of Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, will give the keynote address when the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, celebrates Women's History Month on Saturday, March 19.

    Marthaball_sidebar

    To read more, and to see a video, go to this link: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/channels/22/stories/5682739
  • 10 Feb 2011 4:36 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    ONE Archives is accepting submissions for the 2nd Annual ONE Queer
    Film Fest. The event will combine several historic and contemporary
    films that capture the culture and spirit of queer people. ONE
    encourages queer filmmakers and filmmakers who produce LGBT content to
    submit their short films (roughly 3 - 12 minutes in length) for
    consideration in the film fest. The event will take place this spring.
    Submissions will be accepted through Friday, March 11. If you are
    interested, please contact Tom De Simone at tjdesimone@gmail.com, with
    a description of your film and a link to the film if it is available
    on the web.

    Please feel free to share / post this call for submissions

    Michael C. Oliveira, MLIS
    Project Archivist
    mikeo@onearchives.org

    one National Gay & Lesbian Archives
    909 West Adams Boulevard
    Los Angeles, California 90007-2406
    www.onearchives.org

    t 213-741-0094
    f 213-741-0220
  • 02 Feb 2011 12:23 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Is being lesbian a health hazard? Pioneering physician Patricia A. Robertson ’72 delivers surprising news about how lesbians’ health often differs from other women’s health.

    Read now
  • 24 Jan 2011 4:23 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Mount Holyoke Lyon's Pride is assembling video footage toward a submission to Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" video project. An excerpt from the It Gets Better Project website: "Many LGBT youth can't picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can't imagine a future for themselves. So let's show them what our lives are like, let's show them what the future may hold in store for them." Click the link in the previous sentence to view videos other people have made for the project.

    We would like for you to get out your camera and tape yourself for a minute or two, saying what you'd like young queer people to hear about what it's really like after high school. Give your best advice, your best insights, your heartfelt thoughts. Then take that video and email it to our Lyon's Pride vice-president, Shannon Weber at shannon_weber@umail.ucsb.edu who will then compile it with other submissions to make a YouTube video that will be submitted to It Gets Better. If you have any technical questions about making a video, please contact Shannon about it.

    Deadline for the project is March 15. Feel free to collaborate with other Lyon's Pride members to make a video if you'd like! We can't wait to see what you all create!

  • 15 Jan 2011 8:48 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    The R. Scott Hitt Foundation announces the 2011 R. Scott Hitt Foundation Grants for Internships

    Paid LGBT Internships for Undergraduates and Post-Graduates

    The R. Scott Hitt Foundation Internships for 2011

    The R. Scott Hitt Foundation is offering funding for qualified candidates with
    the vision to be future leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
    (LGBT) movement. Applicants do not need to identify as LGBT in order to apply.

    The pro-LGBT sponsoring organization that you choose to apply with will receive funding
    to compensate your internship position while you strengthen your resume and gain
    valuable skills towards becoming a leader of the future.

    The POST-GRADUATE Internship:

    THE SCOTT HITT INTERNSHIP IN LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
    APPLICATION DEADLINE: MAY 13, 2011


    • Post graduate students with strong academic record
    • Duration: 7-9 months, 40 hour week - $20,000 Grant
    • Location: An established 501(c)3 nonprofit with a commitment to the
    advancement of LGBT equality
    • Applicant contacts host organization which they want to work with and
    co-develops a successful curriculum encompassing these key elements:
    communications, fundraising, board development and grassroots policy
    • R. Scott Hitt was the former Chair of President Clinton's HIV/AIDS Advisory
    Council and the founder of numerous activist and community organizations.
    He was a passionate advocate for civil rights and equality in all communities.
    • 2-4 recipients per year

    The UNDERGRADUATE Internship:

    THE A.N.G.L.E. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INTERNSHIP

    APPLICATION DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2011


    • Current undergraduate students with strong academic record
    • Duration: 8 weeks, 40 hour week - $5000 Grant to sponsoring 501(c)3
    • Location: An established 501(c)3 nonprofit in Southern California with a
    commitment to the advancement of LGBT equality
    • Applicant contacts host organization which they want to work with and co-develops a
    successful curriculum encompassing key elements of non-profit operations and program development
    • Named for the nonprofit ANGLE (Access Now for Gay & Lesbian Equality) which inspired and provided
    the funding for these internships
    • 3-5 recipients per year


    TO APPLY:
    1. Visit www.scotthittfoundation.org for details.
    2. Choose a pro-LGBT 501(C)3 non-profit organization to sponsor your internship.
    3. Agree to the terms of your internship and scope of work with your sponsoring organization. Construct sponsor
    agreement in cooperation with your chosen 501(c)3.
    4. Submit your cover letter, personal essay, résumé and sponsor agreement by the above deadline to scotthittfoundation.org.
    5. Check www.scotthittfoundation.org for grant award dates.


    For additional inquiries, please write us scotthittfoundation@gmail.com


    James Vellequette
    Managing Director
    The R. Scott Hitt Foundation
    www.scotthittfoundation.org
    323-573-3005 (Eastern Time Zone)

    The R. Scott Hitt Foundation
    3699 Wilshire Blvd
    Suite 1290
    Los Angeles, CA
    90010
  • 05 Jan 2011 9:22 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Includes the president of Hampshire College! Thanks to Linley Beckner for the link via Twitter.


  • 09 Dec 2010 4:29 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Posted: Thursday, October 28th, 2010

    By Zuha Shaikh '13
          Contributing Writer, The Mount Holyoke News

    As the debate between social constructionist and queer history theories continues, the Mount Holyoke community stands aloof from the mess created by homophobic prejudices. With open arms, the college welcomes an assortment of women from around the globe. This diversity has fostered an acceptance of difference. In the absence of prejudice, students are free to explore different possibilities of what they can be. While people do experiment, they do so for different reasons.

    I set myself to the task of understanding the role freedom plays in defining one’s sexuality. When I came to this country from Pakistan, I could not have imagined sexuality as fluid. Since then, I have met people who identify themselves at various points on the Kinsey scale, from point zero, “pure heterosexual,” to point six, “pure homosexual.”

    As the French philosopher Michel Foucault once said, “Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.” This spirit for exploration is what liberal arts colleges, more than any other university setting, seek to encourage. At places like Mount Holyoke, where learning is a product of one’s experiences, working through trial and error becomes a must.

    In the words of Albert Camus, another French philosopher, “You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” However, when it comes to carrying out tests upon one’s sexuality, this is not always the case.

    To identify yourself with one sexual orientationundefinedor none at allundefinedis not like choosing a topping for your waffle. The pick is not always divided along distinct lines of taste, but is often a temporary or a permanent result of a mix of luck and opportunity.

    After interviewing (in person and via e-mail) students who classify themselves as straight, lesbian and bisexual, I have established that this yearning to probe one’s sexual identity is driven by many factors. The societies that conform to more heteronormative ideals often discourage non-heterosexuals from expressing themselves. This pushes people with homonormative tendencies to either ignore their attraction towards the same sex or come to understand it, but not express it.

    Some students who leave college for less accepting environments have to present themselves as straight once they are outside of Mount Holyoke. “It’s extremely sad when a woman cannot tell her parents that she is in love with a woman,” one student relates in an e-mail. “Trust me I know from my own life experiences as of this day.”

    When such students walk into Mount Holyoke, the warm welcome opens avenues for new expressions and realizations of their own inclinations. Some recognize these before they come to college, while othersundefinedtriggered by various factorsundefinedrealize it here. Some find it through experimentation, and others through pure luck.

    One student said she only realized she was bisexual after she came to Mount Holyokeundefinedbut she was clear to point out that she was “NOT a BUG,” or “Bisexual Until Graduation,” a slang word used to describe students who return to heterosexuality after college.

    “I have always ignored my attraction to women because of personal reasons and experiences with both gay men and lesbians,” she explained. “Those experiences made me homophobic. I had issues with gays and lesbians as a whole because of a few bad seeds. But when I got to MHC I found the most beautiful woman on this campus and I fell in love with her. I haven’t been in any other relationships like this and it’s real. I couldn’t ignore the feelings and thoughts any longer so I asked her to be my girlfriend and we’ve been together for a year. So I’ve always had the attraction to women and men.”

    As these same sex relationships develop, it becomes more convenient for the general student population to experiment. By and large, the choice previously considered taboo is now looked upon positively. This lures people who have always questioned their sexuality to further explore their identity.

    Meng Yan

    Some straight-identified students might hook up with members of their own sex for any number of reasons. Some, such as the student above, fall in love. Others who may be drunk, bored, depressed or just simply curious, may like the idea of joining what appears to be the greater concentration of the community. When asked whether they had personally known someone who had experimented with her sexuality at Mount Holyoke, the majority of students answered in the affirmative. Thus, while the Mount Holyoke community does not encourage sexual experimentation as a “fad” per se, it certainly makes the approach to embrace change easier and less taboo.

    That said, there are still questions that remain unanswered. How many of us change our sexual behavior just until graduation? The terms BUG and LUG are subject to controversy. The idea of “Until Graduation” underscores the lack of commitment to an identity or identity group. This makes sexual experimentation itself taboo.

    “Majority of them will not ever date another woman again in their life,” a student who chose to remain anonymous commented. “Some will even tell you that they know they are getting married to a man.” However, while the concept of BUGs or LUGs definitely exists, there is no single BUG or LUG identity.

    After talking to students on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that some students who are labeled this way, do not feel free to express themselves outside of Mount Holyoke. They might come from families hostile to the idea of homosexuality. Others might fall under Dr. Sari Locker’s definition of “Bi-Curious”undefineda “one” on the Kinsey scaleundefinedor “Dance Floor Lesbian”undefineda woman who only sometimes hooks up with other women, usually in public.

    These initially “Until Graduation” experiments don’t always end upon graduation. As Chuck Palahniuk wrote in Fight Club, “If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” There are students who say that they have rarely met people who, after experimenting and ending up in a serious same-sex relationship, leave that identity behind completely after graduation.
    Although experimentation exists in some form or another at most colleges in the United States, a valid question is, “If you know your sexual orientation, what is the point of such experimentation with sexuality?” This cogitation makes non-heterosexuals and heterosexuals, mostly look down upon such terms. For some non-heterosexuals, it might be that someone who is not seriously committed to their identity is not “gay enough” to be an insider. For the general public, sexual experimentation might seem like a waste of time, especially when other issues demand attentionundefinedand especially when the individual claims to know they are straight or gay.

    While this argument seems perfectly logical, there still lingers the reality that even some people who claim to be strictly heterosexual, do end up in same-sex relationships temporarily. As Emily Borden ‘11 says, “It’s not necessarily experimentation ‘for fun’ here, but it’s a much more relaxed environment in relation to gender expression and same-sex relations. Sexuality, in my honest opinion, is something fluid that cannot really be defined by a label, but rather that everyone is attracted to whom they are attracted for some reason or another, which makes experimenting with sexuality for fun just another dimension of attraction.”

    Together, all these factors make Mount Holyoke a great attraction for more LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender) applicants. As Borden says, “We’re not any gayer than other people, we just happen to have a large concentration here.” Many who walk in as heterosexuals, despite all the freedom, strictly choose to remain that way. In a women’s college, they find dating prospects off-campus. No strict judgment can be passed on either how many students exactly become bi or lesbian-identified because of Mount Holyoke, or how many choose to remain that way only until graduation.

    Dianne Laguerta ’13, who works in the Admissions office says, “While it seems that there is a large number of LGBT students here just because the environment is so accepting we won’t know for sure because we don’t know how many report it accurately before coming to college.”

    What I could effortlessly establish is that conducting these “tests” is prevalent in the MHC community. Most individuals in the Mount Holyoke community tend to oscillate between being 100 percent straight and 100 percent lesbian. The self-identified “pure heterosexuals” I interviewed for this article said that lesbianism and bisexuality at Mount Holyoke is mostly “a fad.” The queer-identified students told me they were mainly annoyed with their “temporary” counterparts.

    At a women’s college, one can move across the Kinsey’s scale as one wills. “Mount Holyoke is Utopia,” as one junior said. “Of course such experimentation exists!”

  • 09 Dec 2010 4:20 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Posted Thursday, December 9, 2010

    By Clara Lefton '12
          Sports Editor, The Mount Holyoke News

    When Kye Allums became the first transgender man to play women’s NCAA Division I basketball this November, the selection spotlighted the controversy surrounding transgender athletes. George Washington University’s official statement about Kye led to multiple news stories and raised questions about existing policies for transgender student-athletes. Currently, most high school and collegiate athletic programs are unprepared regarding appropriate pronouns, locker room etiquette and hormone treatments; the Transgender Law and Policy Institute found that only approximately 300 of 4,000 universities include gender status in their anti-bullying rules. Although NCAA policies prohibit keeping statistics about the amount of transgender student-athletes, the issue is not uncommon.

    “[This] is not a new issue, but it’s an issue that’s becoming more and more comfortable to bring up. Even just coming out as trans is easier than it was 10 years ago,” says Merric, who began her career at Smith College as a woman but after coming out as a man spring semester of freshmen year, changed his name from Meredith.

    Current NCAA rules allow athletes to compete based off their sex as stated by their state issued identification, yet each state has different regulations regarding how to legally change ones gender. Some require body augmentation through surgery and/or variations in estrogen and testosterone levels based on the individual’s preferred sex or gender; this is regardless of that testosterone is listed as banned NCAA substance.

    “My license says female, so I have to play on a female team and my estrogen levels and my testosterone levels have to be within the ranges for normal or acceptable for a female bodied person,” Merric says.

    Aside from the NCAA, in 2004 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) produced the other most well documented policy regarding transgender athletes. Many high schools and colleges looking for answers have used the Olympic rules, even though most school’s athletes are not professionals. The Olympic documentation is a criterion that determines the eligibility of transgender athletes. The two most debated regulations of the policy are: 1) that genital reconstruction gives a competitive advantage, and 2) that after beginning estrogen therapy a transgendered woman has to wait two years for her testosterone levels to decrease, eliminating any advantage when playing among biologically female-bodied women.

    “It would be helpful [to have federal rules] because it would give people guidelines and rules of this is how to do things,” says Merric. “But it’s a more complicated issue because what is out there right now is the Olympic [Policy].”

    The most recent argument was presented in On The Team, a press release published October 4, 2010 in conjunction with the Women’s Sports Foundation and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. In the report medical experts found flaws in the IOC policy: genital reconstructive surgery does not influence athlete’s abilities and that any advantage a transgender girl might have from testosterone will disappear about a year of taking estrogen regularly.

    “We talked about what’s fair- we were really concerned about what’s fair for the transgender athlete and what’s fair for the other student athletes and the competitive equity, that was a big consideration,” says Mount Holyoke College’s Athletic Director Laurie Priest, who helped write On The Team. “We’ve had Division III athletes who are transgender but were low key, our sports programs aren’t that big, so it’s not such a big deal.”

    “I do understand the issues that the [IOC] aims toward, not necessarily making it more comfortable, but just also the use of juicing or making [competition] fair with testosterone levels,” Merric explains. “[Lacrosse is] as much a part of me and who I am, as my gender identity is. When I’m in the crease, the circle around the goal, it’s the one place I don’t feel uncomfortable; it’s the one place I feel like I fit.”

    Merric began playing lacrosse goalkeeper seven years ago as a way to overcome his depression and low self esteem, but after coming out as a transgender man lacrosse has become a source of stress. In order to obey NCAA regulations that will keep both him and his team eligible for championship competition, Merric has compromised his identity: refusing to legally change his gender and take testosterone until after completing his senior season of lacrosse.

    “There were times, a lot [the] beginning of this summer, when I was struggling with it…Do I really want to wait?” says Merric. “This crazy urge just came over me to quit lacrosse and start taking T[estosterone],” he wrote in his blog this past July.

    Steve, a student-athlete at Mount Holyoke, will begin taking testosterone treatment this Janary. As a club sport-only athlete, NCAA regulations do not apply to him. Therefore the Mount Holyoke’s Ice Hockey team will allow him to continue playing, especially since they are not participating in a league.

    Rugby is on the other hand a different story for Steve. “Because I’m choosing to transition now, and take testosterone, rugby is such a physical sport that it would be an unsafe thing to have me on the field,” Steve explains. “It would be having someone with muscular structure of a male tackling people that don’t have that same structure, and it wouldn’t be fair to other people.”

    Despite conclusions about the competitive concerns of transgender athletes, the NCAA and IOC policies have not changed.

    Note: Some names have been changed or withheld to protect identities.

  • 09 Dec 2010 8:13 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    December 2, 2010
    By: Clara Lefton/TRT Guest Reporter, The Rainbow Times


    South Hadley--David Abbott, former member of ACT-UP and present director of the Rhode Island AIDS Project, gave a speech at Mount Holyoke College entitled “The Importance of Activism in the LGBTQ Movement” on November 17th at 7 p.m. From protesting the Supreme Court to shutting down the New York Stock Exchange, Abbott shared what he has learned over the years. 

    “I didn’t bring a bomb-building kit and I don’t build bombs but I can tell you how to start a really nasty little riot or I can tell you how to write press releases or I can tell you how to meet the President and have an argument with him. None of that really matters. Those are my stories,” said Abbott at the opening of his lecture. The event, organized by Mount Holyoke’s chapter of Equality Across America, detailed the 56-year-old man’s motivation to standup for what he believed in and his wish to inspire others. 

    The Rochester, NY native’s activism began after a 1984 visit to Massachusetts General Hospital. His boyfriend of the time, Jerry, had been in the hospital for what would turn out to be a case of encephalitis. Abbott arrived to find Jerry alone on his bed; the former college linebacker was only 80lbs. After a brief rekindling of love and emotion, a nearby nurse quickly noticed the commotion, but Abbott refused to leave. 

    “He was a twig and-boy the memories don’t go away,” said Abbott, his eyes beginning to tear up in front of his audience. “That’s a visit to the hospital during AIDS. I went in there to see my friend who was dying and I got left on the front curb having been cuffed.” 

    Scarred from his encounter, Abbott became determined to create change and joined Rhode Island’s chapter of ACT-UP shortly after.
      
    “I came because I so appreciate what Act Up contributed to social justice movements,” explained Maxwell Ciardullo, a University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduate student.

    Abbott encouraged the audience to get off their computers and participate in any cause one feels passionate about. “What really works is the soles of your feet and your presence as a human being on the street around the problem. It doesn’t go away because you typed something, that’s just nonsense.”

    “It was brilliant. I had come hoping to get good ideas about activism and how to organize. I’m interested especially in his agenda…and he had some really fun and creative ways of telling them,” said local South Hadley, MA resident Sarah Olmstead who attended the lecture.

    His chilling and exemplary tales of riots, protests and demonstrations went on for over an hour. 

    “What really matters is what I feel about it. What you feel about about it. What you feel right inside your heart because all issues aren’t important,” said Abbott. 
  • 01 Dec 2010 8:40 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    November 1, 2010 | By Nicole Geary

    Step inside Kristen Renn’s office and it’s hard to miss the affinity for her undergraduate alma mater.

    There are posters and pendants from Mount Holyoke College on the wall and a calendar of campus photos near her desk.

    It’s been 25 years since Renn, an associate professor in the College of Education and nationally known scholar of student affairs, graduated from the world’s oldest women-only institution in Western Massachusetts.

    But Mount Holyoke is where she first felt the empowering potential of academia.

    “I would not be here if not for Mount Holyoke,” she says. “It’s the reason I went into higher education.”

    And now, during a career spent studying issues of college student identity and student affairs administration, women’s colleges and universities have become the focus of an exciting worldwide research journey for Renn.

    Although the number of female-only institutions in the United States continues to shrink, women’s colleges and universities are thriving in places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Renn has explored 15 campuses on five continents so far on a mission to determine the current status – and value – of women’s colleges in a global context.

    With little known about the topic beyond U.S. borders, she will be the first to piece together a trans-national picture showing how contemporary women’s colleges fit within societies and systems of postsecondary education.

    “Single-sex institutions provide a window into the status of women in education overall,” said Renn, who spends four to five days interacting with students and faculty at each site, from a rural outpost of 60 pupils in Kenya to a 20,000-student campus in South Korea.

    “The situation of women in higher education is really country- and region-specific.”

    ‘The world needs to know’

    Not surprisingly, Mount Holyoke was instrumental as Renn’s ambitious research plan unfolded.

    She first began interviewing leaders from international women’s institutions during a 2008 conference of Women’s Education Worldwide (WEW), an association of approximately 50 women’s colleges and universities around the world that was co-founded by former Mount Holyoke President Joanne Creighton and Smith College President Carol Christ.

    According to Renn, Women’s Education Worldwide has provided an unprecedented opportunity to study women’s higher education from a comparative perspective. She established contacts that facilitated her case studies in the United Arab Emirates, China, Kenya, Australia, Korea and Japan, as well as forthcoming trips this spring to Bangladesh and India.

    Renn also conducted an exploratory study in 2008 while attending a leadership conference at Mount Holyoke, sponsored by WEW, for students from women’s colleges around the world.

    Individuals often question why women’s colleges are still needed (and financially viable) in North America and Europe, where women account for the majority of postsecondary students and may attend all but a few remaining all-male institutions.

    However, complex issues of culture and access – to safe places to learn, affordable tuition, specific curricula or leadership opportunities, for example – support the existence (and new development) of female-only schools in many other parts of the globe. WEW represents all sizes and types.

    “People may think of women’s institutions as a dying breed, whereas actually there are some wonderful stories about the creation of institutions in places that are quite inhospitable in general to women’s education,” said Creighton, who serves as WEW project director and is now on sabbatical from Mount Holyoke. “Even though we are long-standing institutions, we have a lot to learn from these emerging institutions.”

    Renn, as Creighton says, is one of the lone “ground-breakers” answering the critical need for international, comparative research in the area. Her research has been funded by the MSU College of Education and the Spencer Foundation.

    “I think Mount Holyoke and all of the other institutions will be exceedingly interested in her findings,” Creighton said. “The world needs to know what’s happening in women’s education.”

     

    Tension and bigger questions

    Driven, she says, but not clouded, by her own life-changing experience in a women’s college, Renn has devoted one semester on sabbatical, as well as summer and spring breaks to hop on airplanes and see what role women’s institutions are really serving.

    In Japan, for example, she learned the small number of women’s institutions that have persisted give young women unparalleled access to female professors as role models, particularly in high-tech fields.

    In Dubai, women have no coeducational universities to choose from, unless their families can afford a private option. And, in other places, where coed is the predominant model, women’s institutions often provide the only program in a particular area of study, or at least a more welcoming environment to study in a traditionally male-dominated field.

    Creating “access” to higher education, at least in the legal or historical sense, no longer seems to be the main impetus for female-only institutions, Renn said. Today the argument for their existence is based more on addressing a mix of economic and cultural factors, depending on where you look.

    Perhaps the one common thread is symbolism, she said.

    “There is a tension that is sometimes spoken and sometimes unspoken between traditional gender roles and this vision for what women could be,” Renn said.

    There are legitimate questions about why we still have women’s colleges in the U.S… But, in other countries, the question is why do we send women to college at all? The answers to both of those questions raise other questions for us about equality in society.”

     

    ‘The whole community benefits’

    Jillian Kinzie, who serves as associate director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University-Bloomington, said Renn’s round-the-world project comes at a time when researchers and university leaders in the U.S. are becoming increasingly interested in the status of postsecondary education from global perspectives.

    More importantly, learning about international women’s colleges will help shape our understanding about the role of special-mission institutions in the U.S., including Historical Black Colleges and Universities, military academies and religious colleges.

    “I think it’s important to maintain and not try to homogenize institutions for all students,” said Kinzie, lead author of a well-known 2007 study that showed students at women’s colleges benefit from greater access to leadership opportunities and more meaningful interactions with faculty when compared with peers attending coed institutions.

    “They are valuable forms of undergraduate education and what Dr. Renn is doing is really important to empowering women worldwide.”

    Kinzie said she would have attended a women’s college – which do tend to be elite, private and expensive in the U.S. – if she would have known more about them.

    Renn, who for 29 years has had to defend going to a women’s college, is hoping her project will at least provide guidance and some shared understanding for the administrators of women’s institutions as they face current and expected challenges.

    She will wrap up travel and data analysis by summer 2011. She plans to publish additional journal articles and a book that will summarize and document her journey.

    She knows how her personal and professional aspirations were shaped by attending a women’s college, where she was “taken seriously intellectually, as a leader.”

    And now Renn has seen firsthand – perhaps more clearly than any other scholar of higher education – how women’s institutions are striving to educate, elevate and protect women within unique contexts from nearly every corner of the globe.

    “I would like to come up with something useful for the leaders as they continue to make the case for the enduring value of their institutions, whether their case is about access or student leadership or faculty development,” she said. “There is evidence that when women are better educated, the whole community benefits.”

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