Columns:: The next step: New director discusses her plans for the Women’s Studies program

since 12/15/98

Columns::September 10, 2001

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Campus News

The next step
New director discusses her plans for the Women’s Studies program

By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

The new director of the Women’s Studies Program, Patricia Miller, came to UGA this fall from the University of Florida, where she was active in the Women’s Studies Program and the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research in addition

Patricia Miller, director of the Women’s Studies Program

to her faculty appointment in the psychology department. She took a break from unpacking to tell Columns about plans for women’s studies here.

Columns: Women’s studies here seems to be growing every year.

Miller: It’s an established program, so there’s a lot going on. There are hundreds of women’s studies programs across the country now, and UGA has one of the more established ones. It officially began in 1977, which means that our 25th anniversary occurs in 2002.
It attracted me to come to a program that was already established, but that seemed on the point of being able to really take off. Both UGA and the program itself are at a point where a lot of interesting things seem to be possible. We’ll find out if that’s true or not—but it looked to me like there was much potential here, and a chance to take a good program to the next step.

Columns: How long were you at Florida?

Miller: I had been at Florida since 1977. I taught at the University of Michigan before that. One thing that attracted me to this position is that I’ve always been at land-grant, state research universities—University of Kansas, University of Minnesota, where I got my Ph.D., University of Michigan, University of Florida, and now UGA. A land-grant university made a big difference in my life—made education possible for me—so it’s a setting that I feel committed to.
Also, women’s studies here, like a lot of other places, is within a college but simultaneously exists all over the university. We have affiliated faculty from many different departments and colleges. I was associate dean at the University of Florida for four years recently, and I really liked interacting with people from a lot of different disciplines and being involved in cross-campus activities. It was exciting. Women’s studies is an academic program where you can do that—you can be part of a smaller unit, but at the same time you can also be involved in activities across the whole campus.
I think women’s studies is a model for interdisciplinary research. That’s a key feature of most women’s studies programs. Interdisciplinary is one of those words that people like to use these days, but in reality a lot of the leading research is interdisciplinary. Women’s studies has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, and has already worked through some of the difficulties—so it is a model for how to do it.
The other way I think women’s studies programs can be a model at universities is that they incorporate not only gender but also race and social class as a lens on the world, both in the classroom and in research. Once I learned about feminist theories, I couldn’t look at my research in the same way again—it’s a kind of gestalt shift, I guess. So it’s a very exciting kind of scholarship.

Columns: Are you still actively involved in a research program?

Miller: Yes, definitely. I love my research, and if I’m going to be a leader in women’s studies research on this campus, it’s important for me to keep my own research going.

Columns: What is your area?

Miller: Developmental psychology, cognitive development. Theories of cognitive development are gendered, although this often is not recognized.

Columns: Can you identify goals for the program?

Miller: Academically, we have the undergraduate certificate in women’s studies and the undergraduate major—which is new and growing very fast. We now have 22 students majoring in women’s studies, whereas a year ago we had seven. We feel that the major is good training in a number of ways. The interdisciplinary aspect is very important. In the workplace, you have to know how to work with people with different backgrounds or training, and an interdisciplinary major facilitates being able to work with a team, with people that have different perspectives. And also the multicultural aspect of women’s studies—sensitivity to the issues of race, gender and class—is important for whatever job students end up doing, as well as for their personal lives, of course.
Then we have a graduate certificate, and certainly one of our goals is to think through what, in addition, we’d like to do at the graduate level. There’s a lot of student demand for a master’s or a Ph.D. program. I’m going to a conference this fall at Emory which will focus on the future of graduate programs in women’s studies. We’ll look at the Ph.D.’s in women’s studies—where the students are, what’s good, what the problems are. Should programs around the country continue to develop Ph.D.’s in women’s studies, or should the Ph.D. be in the disciplines? What is the best model of graduate education for women’s studies? Another area that we’ll be thinking about is how to focus research efforts in women’s studies and gender at UGA—it might be a research center, it might be an institute.

Columns: Research on gender issues by faculty who aren’t already affiliated with women’s studies, in other words?

Miller: Both women’s studies faculty and other researchers need a physical and psychological space to explore their common interests. Their research can be enriched by talking to other people on campus who are doing related research, and they may develop grant proposals for collaborative research. So we’re thinking about how best to further scholarship, to further research on women’s studies and gender on campus.
Those are our two big goals—thinking about the graduate program and thinking about research efforts. We also want to continue what we already are doing—a little better and a little more.
It speaks well for the program that the university was committed enough to it to bring in a senior person from outside to head it. To me that says they believe in the program and see its potential. We have 94 courses—a lot of them through other departments, of course—and there are 127 students enrolled in the program as either majors or certificate students. We have 40 affiliated faculty in addition to the core. At UGA there has been a lot of administrative support, which doesn’t happen everywhere. That’s really made a difference. Dean Wyatt Anderson has helped build the program—and I believe there’s been support for the program at all levels. This hasn’t happened at all universities. And the former director, Pat Del Rey, was a real bundle of energy for making things happen.

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Columns is produced by the UGA News Service, a unit of UGA Public Affairs.
Beth Roberts: Columns editor, Juliett Dinkins: Columns managing editor,
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Questions or comments should be directed to columns@uga.edu