CURRICULUM TRANSFORMATION PROJECT REPORT
SUMMER 1993

University of Maryland
Deborah Rosenfelt
Project Director

The Curriculum Transformation Project is one of the major components of the Program to Improve Undergraduate Women's Education at the University of Maryland.Initiated in 1988 in response to the recommendations of the Committee on Undergraduate Women's Education (The Greer Committee), it was first directed by Dr. Betty Schmitz, then Acting Assistant to the President. In Fall 1989 Dr. Deborah Rosenfelt was hired as Full Professor of Women's Studies, with released time to direct the Project.

The Curriculum Transformation Project is now entering its sixth year. The project's major undertaking is its summer faculty development institutes. The Project has now offered five summer seminars, three of eight weeks' duration and two for six weeks. The first two seminars were titled "Thinking about Women"; the remainder, making explicit the Project's concern for other forms of diversity, "Women, Gender, and Race. " The third institute was co-directed by Dr. Rhonda Williams (African American Studies and Economics), and the fourth by Dr. Alaka Wali (Anthropology). Both Dr. Williams and Dr. Wali were themselves faculty participants in the seminars. Dr. Wali was unable at the last moment to co-direct the 1993 institute; funds for her appointment were converted to consultancy monies.

A total of 69 faculty, from 36 departments across the campus, have participated in the summer institutes. In 1993 for the first time, two faculty members from Bowie State University, a historically Black institution, attended as well, with support from the Provost's office at Bowie.

Applications for the seminar are screened by a selection committee representing a range of disciplines. The Project has consistently received more applications than the seminar can accommodate: 18 to 28 applicants for a current 12 places for UMCP faculty. Participants in the summer institutes engage in four kinds of activities: (1) reading texts in their own areas of specialization that address the experiences and contributions of women of diverse backgrounds, origins, and affiliations; (2) reading and discussing representative theoretical texts and articles that have interdisciplinary implications and that address the construction of race and gender and their intersections with class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and physical ability; (3) exploring related pedagogical issues; and (4) redesigning courses to incorporate new material.

Of the participating faculty in 1989-1992, so far 41 of the 57 have submitted syllabi revised to include additional materials on women, gender, and/or race. Many of these courses are high-enrollment distributive courses, or courses required for well-populated major degree programs. A detailed report on the first summer institute, analyzing the nature and extent of curricular change, is available from the Project office. Forty participants have made presentation to their departments or to the University community as a whole regarding the issues addressed by the Project and the processes of curricular change. Attendance at these presentations has ranged from seven (a presentation to a small department) to approximately 150 (a panel for Diversity Awareness Days in Fall 1991). A list of campus presentations by participating faculty is appended. As it suggests, dissemination of information and ideas from the Project has been substantial. A number of faculty have also made presentations growing out of their summer's work in other professional contexts. Most recently, for example, two male project participants traveled to the American Association of University Women's annual conference to take part in a panel, "Male Teachers and Women's Studies in the College Classroom. " This spring, also, four participants gave presentations on the evolution of the project at College Park at a national conference on Multiculturalism and Diversity in Higher Education.

Follow-up surveys administered to the first two groups of participants indicate that the changes initiated during the summer institutes remain considerable. A year and a half after the first institute, most respondents indicated that they were continuing to integrate more materials on women, gender, race, and diversity than in the past, the fundamental objective of the Project. All of the eleven respondents from the 1989 institute indicated that the project continues to influence them very much (9) or moderately (2). Participants in the second summer institute filled out pre-seminar questionnaires as well as comparable post-seminar questionnaires administered a semester later. Comparison of responses clearly indicates that the seminar has been effective in encouraging the inclusion of more materials on diversity in syllabi, assignments, and texts, and in increasing sensitivity to bias in both classroom contexts and disciplinary paradigms.

The Curriculum Transformation Project has also coordinated a number of activities in addition to the summer institutes. In 1990, five faculty in three departments of the College of Arts and Humanities received support for curricular change efforts which the Project facilitated through coordinating meetings of the faculty and through the project director's participation in a workshop for the Art History department. The project director has also conducted workshops or discussions during the academic year for such campus units as English, Music, CAPS, and the College of Education.

The Project has also sponsored or co-sponsored various lectures and programs by visiting speakers during the academic year, including talks by Gerda Lerner for the History Department and by Jane Flax, Robin West, and Ann Tickner for the Government and Politics 1991-92 series, Gender and Politics. In Spring 1992, the Project co-sponsored with Women's Studies the lecture series Women in Cultures of Resistance, which brought to campus five distinguished scholars. This series was funded partly through a $4,000 grant from the Maryland Humanities Council, secured and directed by the Curriculum Transformation Project director. In Fall, 1992, the Project coordinated a working conference, "Crossing Boundaries: Women in an Era of Global Change," which attracted more than 100 attendees from throughout the Maryland System and from other campuses and organizations in the area, including the World Bank and U. S. A. I. D. This conference addresses an area of growing concern for the project, women in international contexts.

In addition to its demonstrable impact on campus, the Curriculum Transformation Project has won national recognition in a number of ways. As perhaps the most visible of the activities implemented in response to the Greer Commmittee's 1988 report, the Project helped the University of Maryland to become a finalist in Women in Communications Inc. 's annual Vanguard Award competition, which honors companies and organizations that have instituted programs to advance women to positions of equality within them. The Greer Committee program as a whole, with the Curriculum Transformation Project prominently featured, was presented as a national model for educational change at the 1990 American Council on Education's Annual meeting and at a 1991 ACE President's Conference for major research universities hosted by UMCP.

Most recently, the Director of the Curriculum Transformation Project wrote a successful application to the Association of the American Colleges on behalf of the University, securing College Park's selection as one of 20 "resource institutions" nationwide to participate in the AAC's multi-year initiative, "American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning. " College Park's two consultants on curriculum transformation, Project Director Deborah Rosenfelt and 1993 faculty participant Dr. Linda Williams (Government and Politics) will be College Park's two consultants on this farreaching project.

Both Project Directors, Betty Schmitz and Deborah Rosenfelt, have spoken and consulted extensively about curriculum transformation. Their invited presentations include addresses to national and regional conferences of such organizations as the National Women's Studies Association, the National Council for Research on Women, the American Association for Higher Education, the American Council on Education, the American Physical Society/American Association of Physics Teachers Conference on the Recruitment and Retention of Women, the American Association of University Women, the HERS summer institutes for Women in Higher Education Administration, the Modern Language Association, Teachers for a Democratic Society, and the Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee State University Systems. A bibliography of their publications concerning the Curriculum Transformation Project at UMCP is appended.

The Curriculum Transformation Project also houses a small resource center for curricular change and responds to approximately one hundred requests annually, on and off-campus, for information and materials. In 1991, the Project produced Women and Gender: A Directory of Scholars, Teachers, and Resources at the University of Maryland, College Park. The Directory provides access to campus resource people already doing work on women and gender. In its computerized form, it constitutes a data base that can be updated regularly.

The Curriculum Transformation Project is currently seeking external funds to support a series of programs and institutes on teaching about women and gender in international contexts, particularly in this era of rapid global change. Steven Zwerling of The Ford Foundation has expressed interest in a preliminary proposal, and has asked the Project to organize a meeting for him to attend in Fall 1993, where he can meet with those who over the past two years have worked to develop a project located at the nexus of international studies and women's studies.

The project is currently seeking support from the Chancellor's office to enable it to open its sixth institute to more faculty systemwide. We trust that the new Provost will renew College Park's current level of support for this active and effective project.

UNIVERSITY SUPPORT

Operating Costs

$9,000 per year x 4 years = $36,000*

Consultants

Year 1*
Year 2 = 3,800
Year 3 = 200
Year 4 = 335
Year 5 = 2,700
7,035

Faculty Salaries (includes Research Assistantship and Co-Director)

Year 1 = $128,000
Year 2 = 146,000
Year 3 = 140,000
Year 4 = 100,000
Year 5 = 60,000
$574,000

*Figures unavailable for start-up year; administered through the President's Office.