Good Day. Before I begin I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you very much for including me in the faculty retreat. My first year at Salem College has been an extraordinary one. I feel very fortunate to find myself amidst a supportive environment, with wonderful colleagues, and to be able to teach ambitious students with excellent potential. Let me begin with an anecdote: When I research, teach, or discuss the existence and ideals of women’s colleges, inevitably the term “finishing school” or “Mrs. Degree-granting institution” is lobbed as a pejorative. I find this sort of humorous, because I understand that the speaker, in attempting to insult women’s colleges, is in fact, actually complementing women’s colleges’ curriculum. After dispensing with the annoying smirks and the not so veiled misogyny, I of course launch into my gentle historical discussion on the emergence of women’s colleges. Women’s colleges began with vision--administrators, faculty, and supporters founded and maintained their colleges with a critical level of conscious intention and design. First and foremost they hoped to offer women liberal arts educations—denied to them prior to the nineteenth century. Through course requirements, through college organization, athletics, women learned routes of power, how to work cooperatively, how to actively compete, and how to lead.
In the earliest years of republican motherhood, in which American society charged women with active roles as moral guardians, as culture bearers, as ones in charge of fashioning the foundations to create respectable and productive citizens. Young women in the nineteenth century were guided through a curriculum that would in fact make them good mothers and good wives. But what was included in that education, society has dropped from their general consciousness. Professors instructed female students in, yes, the decorative arts and proper etiquette, but also, among other things, in writing, analytical thinking, mathematics, the sciences, great books, biography, classical languages, biography, and contemporary affairs. Education moved elite and middle class women away from the popular but historically false vapid constructions of Victorian women, to women who engaged their family communities. To be women of status meant to be educated women. Course curriculums changed to suit the historical context but throughout 19th and early twentieth centuries, African- American and white women’s education focused on moving young girls out of adolescence. As productive and respective female citizens, through formal and informal progressive and conservative campaigns and as career women, these women carved niches and create satisfying lives while improving the lives of others.
From the end of World War II through the 1970s, female discontent and the rise of the feminist movement encouraged an emphasis on self-improvement; the acceptance of women as equals in the professions and the trades. Women entered into colleges, male- only colleges opened up to coeducational institutions, and women demanded equal treatment at these institutions, and again the debate over the utility of women’s colleges reemerged. Was this type of college still necessary, hadn’t the playing field been leveled enough so that it was now up to the women themselves to assume parity? Of course we know the statistics, that sexual discrimination and sexism has narrowed but we also read again and again in academic studies that among other things, women in coeducational institutions are still affected or intimidated by the presence of male students, that professors continue to reinscribe notions of difference in their treatment of and approach to female students. With this in mind, the utility of female colleges speaks for itself, not to create a utopia or a false world for women, but rather to create a space that empowers them by building their confidence, their analytical skills, their ability to speak comfortably in front of one or one hundred. The small environment, the interpersonal relations that develop between students and students, students and faculty, and students, faculty, and administration is not terribly different than the small elite coeducational colleges but the motivations may vary and the audience is certainly different. Like all educational pursuits this setting has mutually inextricable links to political goals of creating strong and educated women. Sometimes it helps to be reminded of this mission—that it is in many ways similar to other college campuses in educational goals, but the fact that the student population is comprised of women means that we must prepare and relate to the students differently. Not recognizing the different position that women hold in the consciousness of society and how that affects their placement and experience in society is wrongheaded and misguided.
Faculty at Salem are charged with such a unique mission, and thus we feel that we need to be at our best—in research, in teaching, and in our interpersonal encounters with students.
The uniqueness of a women’s college setting presents itself most obviously in the classroom, in office hours, in extra-curricular meetings, and informal interactions. The challenges or difficulties of teaching women of all classes, races, varying ages, from regions close and afar seem daunting but I employ several strategies or tenets to guide me through this morass of difference. As the faculty step on this campus we are reminded of the legacy of Salem and other women’s colleges and the agendas and missions put forth by great teachers and administrators before me. We are here to teach, to guide, to mentor, to empower, to instill a love of critical thinking and knowledge, and to provide students with concrete tools to succeed in their professional, community, and personal lives. This is a daunting task and one that we understand, alone we cannot complete. The faculty are inspired by the individual life stories and experiences each Salem woman brings to the classroom and to the office. We remember that these are women, most in transition, either from adolescence or midlife changes. We remember that these women both expect a service to be provided with each lecture and meeting but also they expect to be guided through the task of intellectual and emotional maturation. We understand that our job is not only information distribution but is much more holistic. Bodies and minds undergo incredible transformations while engaging in higher education.
At Salem and at other women’s institutions we inspire students by respecting them. We inspire students by recognizing how their individual race, ethnic, class, regional, and sexual identities have shaped them but we do not pigeon hole them because of it. We inspire students by our approach to them as unique individuals. At Salem we inspire students through mutual respect, our confidence in their ability to succeed, our willingness to guide them through their challenges, and the recognition that we view them on a personal level. We inspire students by making the courses rigorous, by making the courses challenging so that when they are successful in their efforts they acquire genuine feelings of accomplishment. Dumbing down courses reinforces a sense of inferiority--the notion that this is all that can be expected of them. At Salem we inspire students through our comfort in allowing them to sometimes direct the subject conversation on a particular topic. Our self-worth is not wrapped up in our being able to overwhelm students with our brilliance but rather how successful we can be in guiding them to achieving their goals. At Salem we inspire students by conveying to them that we understand the challenges of subject mastery, that we were once there, and that if they trust our guidance and employ our strategies they too will succeed. At Salem and at other women’s colleges we inform students that We are here to eliminate the mystique of knowledge-- that knowledge acquisition is strenuous and challenging but not magical, rather, there are steps to it. We inspire students by not condescending to them because of course we already have the degrees, we don’t have to prove our superior knowledge. We inspire students by not intimidating them with the course workload but rather by electrifying them with it. We inspire students by designing each course session formally with desired intents and goals. Nebulous classes often lead to confusion. As one of my mentors stated, informality is overrated.
At women’s colleges and here at Salem we inspire students when we engage them in dialogue, by respecting and developing their viewpoints, but also in the ability to not embarrass but gently guide the misguided. Women’s colleges work to develop female student voices and we need to do so carefully and with respect. While to completely hide our views is somewhat dishonest and cowardly (students pick up on this anyway) students learn by example and the way in which we present our views is crucial to how they will engage in future conversations. We inspire students by our obvious respect for them. Students are inspired by the accessibility and approachability of their professors and their genuine interest in their concerns and goals. We inspire students through our compassion, individualizing our interactions with them and supporting them in their class, extra-curricular, political, employment endeavors. Finally, we inspire our students as mentors.