Greetings and welcome to the Women’s Studies Program. Women’s Studies at NIU has served students, faculty, and the larger community for over 25 years, helping to change minds and lives for the better. The program focuses on women’s experiences and gender issues in economics, politics, education, health, literature, science, the arts, history, and other areas important to understanding individuals, society, and citizenship. We invite you to become involved! For students, we offer general education classes, an undergraduate minor, a self-designed major (a “contract major”) , and a graduate certificate. The goal of these programs is to introduce you to ideas that will help you connect your education with the world outside the university, critique received wisdom, achieve your career goals, pursue social justice, and transform your world. We take pride in the fact that our students come from departments in every college in the university. After graduation, they go on to careers in teaching, law, public service, business, health care, and other fields.
Faculty and staff, we invite your involvement through becoming Faculty Associates or Affiliates, through teaching courses, and through contacting us with your questions and ideas. Currently, forty Faculty Associates and thirty faculty and staff Affiliates represent a diverse range of departments across the university. We offer networking and support for female faculty members as well. We are committed to promoting diversity on campus, and we have close links with such units as LGBT Studies, the Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Committee, the Women’s Resource Center, and the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. We are also actively engaged in increasing the number of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as other fields in which women are under-represented.
Finally, each year we offer events open to the university community and the general public. For Women’s History Month in March, we energize the campus with an array of performances, lectures, panels, and other events. We engage local high school girls in our annual conference for young women. We sponsor expert speakers on a variety of topics of current interest. In addition, our student interns serve in many communities in Northern Illinois, assisting women and girls through a variety of public service agencies.
If you would like to learn more about our academic program, our Mothers Memorial Scholarship Fund, or other activities, please follow the links on this website.