Chair
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending multiple events featuring women’s studies students’ experiential learning opportunities and accomplishments. These included
presentations and discussions with UF alums who leveraged their women’s studies education into successful and impactful careers in health care, law, and media. They also included women’s studies students presenting their honors thesis research across a rich range of domains, including projects focused on chronic illness, ballet culture, and recreational fear. Most recently, we had an event featuring students involved in community-engaged team research, funded by a Mellon Foundation grant to our department. These projects include analysis of the practice-based knowledge of specialists working in sexual and domestic violence organizations, producing an oral history and documentary film featuring the art and cultural production of nail techs, understanding young adult activists’ narratives and experiences, and developing community-based support and knowledge around chronic vulvovaginal pain.
Across these events, I have been struck by our students’ thoughtful descriptions of the enduring value of these learning experiences. They describe learning critical thinking and analysis, engaging with and generating new ideas, holding complexities and contradictions, listening to and understanding people’s experiences across differences. They also describe learning practical skills such as public speaking, interviewing, data analysis, field observation, film production, media content creation, event organization and logistics, community and professional networking, and writing and presenting for community and academic audiences. There is an immense joy and confidence in these students when they describe experiencing the seed of an idea they planted and watched grow and develop in these projects, with. the support of their faculty mentors and peer researchers. These students embody the value and values of higher education, central to which is fostering the opportunity and freedom to pursue knowledge. Women’s Studies as a discipline grew from students exercising this freedom by working with faculty and institutions to create courses, degree programs, and departments in the discipline. In this way, the very existence of Women’s Studies programs signifies trust and respect for students’ vision, agency, and potential. In this same spirit, the continuing strength of our department and Women’s Studies programs everywhere is an indicator of our institutions’ value for students’ freedom to learn. I am grateful to our students and faculty for reminding us of this central value and mission every day.