By Carolyn Smith
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Twenty years ago, when the UA added an undergraduate womenıs studies program, the department was set up in the math building on a floor where there was no restroom for women.
This fall, with a new director and a freshly added masterıs program, faculty members in the Womenıs Studies Department are content, if somewhat cozy, in the basement of the Douglass Building.
Director Judy Nolte Temple, a joint professor of womenıs studies and English, came to the University of Arizona in 1981, to be the assistant director of a program to assist various faculty members in incorporating information into their curriculum by and about women.
Temple, along with several other teachers, conducted workshops, led retreats, gave presentations, provided a series of guest speakers, and helped to revise syllabi for UA courses.
³Our goal was to deeply integrate women into the courses,² Temple said. ³Although the funding for the program lasted only three years, several of us got involved in publishing a book which helped pay for the four years the program lasted.²
Some of the graduates of the program include Myles Brand, who is now the president of Indiana University, and Holly Smith, Social and Behavioral Sciences Dean.
In 1989, Temple started teaching classes in the English and womenıs studies departments, concentrating partly on women in pioneer days and women in western culture.
³I think I was chosen to be director this year because I have done some work in administration, also because of my deep commitment to womenıs studies,² Temple said.
In addition to Temple, there are seven faculty members in the Womenıs Studies Department, and 60 affiliated faculty members. Three new faculty members have been added to the team, in addition to the masterıs program, which currently has eight students enrolled. There are also 40 womenıs studies majors this year.
³Weıre hoping to build on our programıs strengths, and we are very excited about the energy the students and faculty have this semester,² Temple said.
The womenıs studies program sponsors community outreach in a number of ways: through the Womenıs Studies Advisory Council, which includes more than 180 supporters from the greater community; by training public school teachers in gender-sensitive methods of instructing young girls; and by sponsoring conferences and providing speakers for the public.
The department can be found in Douglass Building room 102 or reached by phone at 621-7338.