Academic Affairs. Dean, College Of Liberal Arts And Sciences. Women in the Curriculum Program (University Of Maine) Records

The Women in the Curriculum program (WIC) evolved from a pilot project which began in the fall of 1980. Headed by JoAnn Fritsche, Director of Equal Opportunity and Women's Development at the University of Maine, the Women in Curriculum Advisory Committee developed strategies for the inclusion of women's experiences and perspectives in the educational process. Fritsche was the first director of the University’s Equal Opportunity Office which helped pave the way for growing awareness of the importance of gender on campus.

In his inaugural address on February 2, 1981, University of Maine (UMaine) President Paul H. Silverman announced that he was appointing an eight-member women and the curriculum committee “to study needs and aspirations of women students, make recommendations on curriculum content concerning women, and consider the appropriateness of the traditional modes of delivery of educational and support services, particularly in the light of the new scholarship on women.”

In practical terms the pilot project looked at solutions for integrating women’s material into the curriculum of the University of Maine and looking at addressing sexist hiring practices for educational administrators generally and for graduates specifically. The pilot looked at four disciplines Humanities, Social Science, Education, and Science with different faculty members responsible for each discipline project.

In the fall of 1981, WIC secured a $203,000 grant from the Leadership in Educational Equity Project (LEEP) in the Department of Education to field test a model for other colleges and universities within New England hoping to implement similar curriculum transformation projects. The chair of the WIC Committee was UMaine English professor Nancy MacKnight. MacKnight would be one of the first of many UMaine faculty to receive a WIC grant from the Committee of Women and the Curriculum (CWC) to support individual department curriculum work, including travel to learn about fresh approaches to their discipline.

In September 1981, the WIC held the first of its brown bag lunch series for people interested in the WIC to gather and discuss the project and related issues. Over the years the lunches would grow in size and feature lectures from UMaine faculty and visiting scholars. WIC also organized and hosted a number of conferences, symposiums, and workshops on campus. The CWC also kept the community aware of their efforts by publishing a newsletter for faculty, staff, and students.

In 1983, after the termination of the two-year grant, WIC was institutionalized with funding for permanent staff and operating expenses. In 1985, WIC became independent of the Equal Opportunity Office and the program was formally acknowledged with the name Women in Curriculum/Women's Development Program and Jodi Wetzel hired as director.

WIC were also instrumental in the development of the UMaine’s Women’s Studies Program under Evie Newlyn (1987-1988). In 1990, WIC's organizational make-up changed, installing senior, tenured faculty members as directors of the program on a release time basis. During the fall of 1991 the WIC office moved from its original location at Shibles Hall, to 101 Fernald Hall where it would share space with the newly established Women's Resource Center. The Women's Resource Center (led by Sharon Barker) would also take over some of WIC's non-curriculum related responsibilities.

Evelyn Newlyn also served on the President's Council on Women which was established in 1990 in response to the recommendation of the Task Force on the Status of Women. The Council looked at a number of issues related to gender and cultural diversity on campus and creating a better climate for women.

During the 1994-1995 school year, WIC officially changed its name to Women in the Curriculum/Women's Studies Program (WIC/WST), to more accurately describe its function. Because of university reorganization in 1997 the WIC/WST program was housed within the newly developed College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but later that summer moved to the College of Arts and Humanities.

In 2009 UMaine received a 3.2 million five-year Institutional Transformation “Advance” grant from the National Science Foundation Grant to support women faculty members in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) disciplines. This new program, the Advance Rising Tide Center, assumed the role of providing grants and for offering faculty development symposia on topics of interest to all women faculty. In 2010 the WGS program stopped its grants program.

In 2014 the Women in the Curriculum and women’s studies program became the “Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies” program.