The University of Arizona Women's Studies Department requests funding to develop a curriculum for a twelve-hour Tri-University Certificate in Women's Studies that would provide an under-served and under-represented population with a jump start in university education. The proposed distance learning program would be designed to reach those people who are unable to attend university classes because they are geographically tied to their homes, families, and/or workplace. Such an initiative is in line with the goals of the Arizona Regents University (ARU) proposal to develop a virtual university that will "enrich the lives of many across Arizona who have needed access to courses in remote rural areas or have needed a more flexible course schedule to complete their studies" (ABOR, "Arizona Virtual University Launched"). In addition to providing such flexibility, the proposed curriculum would equip these students with the knowledge, skills, and personal and professional development they need to succeed in higher education and increasingly technical careers. Specifically, the program would provide students with computer and internet competencies; membership in a virtual community of learners with varied but overlapping experiences; and a course content that offers theoretical and historical tools to make sense of a world that excludes some members of society while rewarding others.
The population served by the proposed distance learning certificate are students who are interested in learning but who are not able to attend a university or college. They may be tied geographically to an area far from any existing (or proposed) institution of higher education. Or they may live in an urban area but be unable to attend the local university for any number of reasons: child- or elder-care responsibilities, disability, spousal restrictions on mobility and opportunities, long work hours, limited transportation, incarceration, or a combination of these situations. Because entrenched structures of inequality determine social and economic rewards, this population can also be defined in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. That is, this proposal aims to reach those very groups who are under-served by traditional university classrooms and curricula; thus, the proposed program would assist UA in recruitment and retention of minority students. In addition, we will meet the needs of many working professionals who are interested in topics of women and gender, courses that were not available in many universities and colleges even a generation ago, and whose work schedule do not allow them to take advantage of the full range of university courses. This group is presently being served (and perhaps not well) by non-ABOR institutions like the University of Phoenix. These populations represents an untapped sector of persons interested in university learning and improving themselves for personal and career advancement who are unable to take advantage of traditional university methods and means of instruction. Participation in the Tri-University Women's Studies Certificate Program might empower them to find ways to pursue more education at one of the Arizona campuses, might lead them to pursue other distance learning programs offered by the Arizona Regents University, or might serve as a stand-alone certificate that would equip them with technical skills and thinking tools to make more of themselves and their lives.
We envision the certificate as a four-course, twelve unit program, including an introduction to gender and society, a course on feminist theories, and two electives chosen from a selection of courses offered in the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences. The content of the courses would be specifically designed to empower the under-served population by focusing on the culture of marginalized groups (e.g., Chicana literature, women's history) and tools of analysis that help them to make sense of their world (e.g., feminist theories, methodologies of multi-cultural analysis). All courses would have strong research and writing components and would include significant ongoing input from a reference librarian specializing in Women's Studies.
The grant money requested would be used to offer a series of three summer mini-conferences in May 2001 to develop the tri-university curriculum. Two of the conferences would be held at UA, and the third at ASU. The workshops will introduce participants to a variety of Women's Studies and related courses presently being offered through distance learning; introduce them to a range of distance learning technologies from which they might draw in developing their own courses; provide a forum for discussion of legal issues and practical issues surrounding web teaching; and study the needs and demographics of the target populations so as to design a curriculum that can serve them effectively. Perhaps most important will be our discussion of how to translate traditional teaching methods into distance learning modes, since Women's Studies traditionally relies heavily on discussion and personal interaction; indeed, they have been central to our pedagogy. We will also need to continue our training of Women's Studies faculty in the skills necessary to develop and teach such courses. The final mini-conference will be a working conference at which we will finalize the curriculum and work together to develop a pilot course to be taught from UA Women's Studies in the 2001-2002 academic year.
We will bring in one guest speaker, Ellen Cronan Rose (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), a nationally-recognized expert in Women's Studies distance learning for the first mini-conference. In addition, we will draw on a variety of local expertise, including IT specialists from the Faculty Center for Instructional Innovation (FCII) at UA and the Information Technology / Instruction Support (IT/IS) group at ASU; they will demonstrate the IT tools available to faculty at the two campuses. We will also solicit presentations from UA faculty who have published on distance learning, pedagogy, and currirulum transformation and who have developed courses or modules that make effective use of instructional technology (though their courses may not be taught entirely through distance learning), including Ruth Dickstein, Beth Harrison, Kari Boyd McBride, Mary Poulton, and Marie Reyes. We will seek legal advice on copyright issues through library staff and the attorney's offices. And we will invite a variety of experts to advise us on the situation of women in Maricopa and Pima counties (Arizona population centers) and throughout the state, including the Tucson Women's Commission, the governor's office, research associates from the Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW), and local residents representative of the populations we wish to serve.
Principle investigator for the project is Kari Boyd McBride. Paid participants will include three other UA faculty, Laura Briggs, Theresa Delgadillo, and Judy Temple, who have committed themselves to bringing this program to fruition, and a librarian, Ruth Dickstein, who will work with faculty to develop research modules and, later, with the students in the certificate program as they conduct online research. We will offer honoraria to a number of community consultants to advise us on the project, as well as to the UA faculty who make presentations on their distance learning modules and methods. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, head of Women's Studies at UA, will participate in all facets of the project, and all UA Women's Studies faculty (including affiliates and adjuncts) will be invited to participate as they are able; we hope this "open-door" policy will lead to wide UA participation in the program as it develops. In addition, Kathleen Ferraro, Director of the Women's Studies Program at ASU, and Astair Mengesha, Chair of the Women's Studies Program at ASU West, and their faculty are fully committed to joint participation in the project. They and five ASU Women's Studies faculty will participate in the program. In addition, Professor Ferraro is seeking institutional support for the ASU faculty contribution to course and curriculum design. The proposal has the support of the Arizona Women's Studies Council, which brings together the heads of all four Arizona Women's Studies programs two to three times per year. And Joseph Boles, Director of the Women's Studies Program at NAU, is very interested in participating in the certificate program once it is instituted; however, he is unable at this time to commit resources to the project. He and two of his faculty members will be participating as observers in the proposed mini-conferences. The proposal also funds one UA graduate research assistant who will be trained in an array of instructional technology skills and programs (in part, through UNVR 697B), who will assist in the development of the project, and who will serve as support staff for the workshops and conferences. We are requesting funding for two laptops, one for Judy Temple, whose present equipment does not allow her to move forward in integrating IT into her courseware, and another that would be available to the graduate research assistant for course development and support of the proposed mini-conferences. Beginning next fall, the laptop will rotate each semester to the Women's Studies UA graduate student assigned to assist the ongoing distance learning certificate program.
This proposed certificate program builds on
the emerging strengths in Women's Studies at UA. Women's Studies faculty
have already developed a number of courses that make rich use of IT; in
addition, ASU relies on a video-based course (purchased from the University
of Ohio) as a regular part of its curriculum. ASU has also worked with
a handful of women at the federal prison who have taken online courses
(one of whom completed a B.A.), and faculty at both institutions are interested
in exploring a partnership with the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Perhaps most importantly, the feminist project in general is committed
to serving the populations defined by this proposal. To that end, we would
expect to follow up this first phase with a second round of brainstorming
and grant-writing to identify corporate sponsorship that would provide
computers for our students, many of whom would need a computer in order
to participate in the program. We think that a combination of corporate
and individual gifts plus a program of refurbishing cast-off computers
from the three universities and other institutions and businesses would
easily supply this need.