Panel supports Women's Studies
FSEC recommends transforming Women's Studies from program to department

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

After nearly two months of consideration, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee at its March 29 meeting approved the transformation of the Women's Studies Program in the College of Arts of Sciences into a full-fledged department.

The issue first came to the FSEC in early February when Claude Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science and chair of the senate's Academic Planning Committee, submitted an interim report announcing that while Women's Studies has been functioning as a department, it never officially was granted departmental status by the university.

Isabel Marcus, professor of law, submitted to the APC an 18-page report on Women's Studies, which prompted the committee to recommend to the FSEC its formal acceptance of departmental status. Marcus had been appointed chair of the proposed department by former Provost Thomas Headrick.

However, when the APC recommended approving the proposal based on Marcus' report, FSEC members still had concerns, such as the small number of full-time faculty in the program, the question of whether this change would cost the CAS anything, and confusion about what appeared to be a change in the trend from consolidating or dissolving small programs at the university.

Marcus told the FSEC that the program functions based on a model similar to that of comparative literature by utilizing adjunct faculty to supplement the core full-time faculty members. She listed in her report the names of more than 20 full-time UB faculty members serving as adjuncts in Women's Studies. She also noted that this model is common among the approximately 15 doctoral programs in women's studies nationwide.

She added that, aside from one faculty appointment promised by Headrick but postponed due to the CAS hiring freeze, there would be no other cost incurred in making the program a department.

FSEC members assured Marcus that they did not question the quality or rigor of the program, but rather wanted to know why make the program a department, rather than maintaining it as a program.

Both CAS Dean Kerry Grant and Marcus said that if it is not a department, the program is perceived by graduate students and other universities as being less competitive.

Lou Swartz, professor of law, noted that it was "unusual to see this university forming new departments," adding that the number of core faculty would "probably not grow to a critical mass" to be considered on a national level.

He submitted a nearly two-page document questioning the proposal in terms of the university's "priorities" and posed the question: Are departments to be merged in some sectors of the university, on grounds of efficiency and effectiveness in the management of resources, while at the same time new departments are to be formed with no apparent regard to the same criteria?

A motion proposed by Swartz to refer this matter to the new governance body in the CAS was defeated.