Introduction

The interdiscipline of Women’s Studies remains a relative newcomer to academia, an outgrowth of the women’s movement of the late sixties and seventies. The first Women’s Studies program in the United States was established at San Diego State University in 1970, and the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) was formed in 1977. In the thirty years since, Women’s Studies programs and departments have burgeoned in every state and at every level, from community college to doctoral programs, from private liberal arts colleges to large state-supported universities. As technology renders distance learning increasingly convenient, Women’s Studies programs are offering their courses on line as well.

The early history of Women’s Studies echoes a movement that occurred approximately one hundred years earlier—the development of English Studies, or English, as we call it, now one of the most established fields in the academic curriculum. Like English Studies, Women’s Studies sought to illuminate areas of knowledge that its proponents believed had received insufficient attention; it, too, was inspired by a virtually missionary zeal to teach some of society’s disadvantaged about their history and culture, even as it, too, initially focused on a white middle class. Finally, both areas were expected to justify themselves and their place in higher education.

Those of us in Women’s Studies can only hope that over time our field will keep developing in new directions while gaining the credibility of the discipline of English. Such recent books as When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women’s Studies in America by Marilyn Jacoby Boxer, Women’s Studies on its Own, edited by Robyn Wiegman, and Women’s Studies for the Future, edited by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Agatha Beins, indicate that the area has created a niche for itself. The fact remains, however, that even though the interdiscipline has gained recognition in multiple parts of the academy, many students, faculty members, administrators, legislators, and members of the general public continue to question the validity of the field. For example, in “An Empty Room of One’s Own: A Critical Look at the Women’s Studies Programs of North Carolina’s Publicly Funded Universities,” Melana Zyla Vickers argues that Women’s Studies programs offer “doctrinaire, proto-Marxist teachings on subjects that are dated and largely hostile to the majority of women’s views of work, family, and heterosexuality.” On an individual level, students in Women’s Studies classes at two different state universities in relatively rural areas reported in 2007 that they had been teased or harassed about their affiliations with the program. Faculty members in these and similar institutions report that Women’s Studies at once lessens their sense of isolation and renders them targets of verbal attack from male colleagues.

In this context, it comes as little surprise that in “The Possibility of Women’s Studies,” Robin Wiegman characterizes the dominant narrative of the discipline as one of “apocalyptic” thinking (41), organized around recurring assertions of the discipline’s failure and approaching demise, even as the number of PhD programs in Women’s Studies is growing, and the 2007 NWSA conference was one of the largest ever. How do we sort out these competing views? What truly happens in Women’s Studies classrooms? What exactly do students learn? Are the skills gained in Women’s Studies classes ultimately as essential as those taught in such established disciplines as English?

The aim of this study is to find current answers to some of these questions and to chart a process for finding answers to the others. Its immediate audience is intended to be directors and chairs of Women’s Studies programs assessing student learning in their units, preparing self-study documents for program reviews, and justifying requests for resources. At the same time, this study seeks to insert itself in the wider national dialogues about accountability in U.S. higher education, and in particular to respond to concerns raised by Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education, regarding the “value added” by university and college degrees. The National Women’s Studies Association concurs with the views of major national organizations such as the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) that tertiary educators need to be proactive in assessment efforts; our members’ expertise as professionals endows them with a thorough understanding of the complexities and diversity of learning in Women’s Studies.

(1)The Spellings Commission, appointed by the Secretary of Education, issued a report in late 2006 which deplored “a lack of clear, reliable information about the cost and quality of postsecondary institutions, along with a remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms to ensure that colleges succeed in educating students.”

The report further criticized the “internal” nature of accreditation and recommended national assessment tests for gauging student progress toward achieving learning outcomes. Among other recommendations, the document proposed incentives for cost-cutting in higher education.