March 12, 2012

Sheldon Pollack

Chair, Coordinating Committee on Education

UD Campus

Dear Dr. Pollack:

This letter is in response to your request for additional information regarding our proposal for a Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate. You will find answers to each of your questions below and we hope you will share them with the committee as it contemplates our proposal.

Our faculty has grown in the past couple of years (1 tenure-track line and 4 new part-time lines) and we are able to commit to a course a semester for the graduate certificate without putting stress on our undergraduate program. Specifically, WOMS 604 will be staffed by Dr. Margaret Stetz in Fall 2012. We plan to offer WOMS 605 taught by Dr. Alvina Quintana in Spring 2013. The following fall, 2013, we expect to offer WOMS 606 taught by Dr. Pascha Bueno-Hansen. We will continue that pattern through the foreseeable future.

Students from any department in the University are welcome to enroll in our graduate courses. Since Women’s Studies is interdisciplinary, we expect there to be interest from many quarters. Also, there is nothing to prohibit undergraduate students from enrolling, and we would welcome advanced undergraduates. All of the courses for the graduate certificate are new. In addition to the 5-7 students enrolled in the certificate program, we expect that an additional 3-6 graduate students from various departments and a very small number of advanced Women's Studies undergraduate students will enroll in the courses, with the exception of the one-credit writing requirement (WOMS 608). This should hold true over the three full-credit courses.

When Women’s Studies became a department, the administration expressed the expectation that it would begin working toward a graduate program. Most departments do have a graduate component and Women’s Studies is expected to follow suit. The certificate was developed in consultation with the Dean's
Office and both Dean Watson and Associate Dean Pika are fully informed about its progress. It features prominently in the departmental goals as outlined by the Chair as part of the annual appraisal process. In addition, in response to your recent e-mail, the Chair informed the Dean of the committee's desire to have his explicit endorsement and he sent you an email response.

We trust this additional information provides sufficient detail for the committee to support our proposal.

Sincerely,

Monika Shafi, Chair and

Elias Ahuja Professor of German

Jessica Schiffman

Assistant Professor and Associate Chair