The educational goals for students in the Women’s and Gender Studies program are:

• To explore the historical development and contemporary manifestation of gender-based inequalities.
• To generate new knowledges about women’s lives and resistances in U.S. and global contexts.
• To advance critical research, thinking and writing skills as integral to professional development and political engagement.
• To foster understandings about how to transform inequalities of race, class, gender and nations through direct engagement with communities in service learning.

Specifically, students will have the opportunity to acquire certain knowledge, skills and experience:

Knowledge

Students studying Women's and Gender Studies will acquire knowledge about:

• The multidisciplinary nature and interdisciplinary methods of Women's and Gender Studies scholarship.
• The historical and contemporary cultural, social, political and economic contexts of gender in the United States and globally.
• The interaction of gender with other culturally constructed categories, such as race, age, etc., in order to foster a greater understanding of diversity.

Skills

Students studying Women’s and Gender Studies will have the skills to:

• Think across disciplines.
• Understand and utilize the theories and methods of the various disciplines that contribute to Women’s and Gender Studies.
• Apply their knowledge to a variety of careers in business, nonprofit work and the public sector, as well as be qualified for graduate studies in any social science.
• Be knowledgeable activists for the human rights of all women and men, irrespective of cultural biases and stereotypes.

Experience

Students studying Women’s and Gender Studies will be experienced in:

• Academic research and analysis in a variety of academic fields and disciplines.
• Professional and respectful interactions with disagreeing others in public discussions of gender issues (students will become teachers).
• Maintaining a recognition of human diversity and analyzing each human issue from a race, class and gender perspective (at a minimum).