COORDINATOR’S CORNER

Welcome to the beginning of a new school year! Women’s Studies has a multitude of exciting events coming up. The Fall Retreat will be held, as last year, at Dr. Angelika Pagel’s home. Faculty and administrators are invited to share successes of the past year and address concerns for the future. One discussion topic will be how to make course and overall program evaluations public and visible. Also, the retreat provides a great opportunity to meet those involved in the academic roles of women on campus.

Our video series will begin on Wednesday, October 6th, at 1:15 pm. This year’s theme, Women in Sports, addresses individual experiences and changing societal attitudes towards women’s athletics. The public is invited; we appreciate the support of anyone who can attend and spread the word.

Several of the videos will be back-to-back with the Services for Women’s Students’ "Women on Wednesdays" series at noon, beginning September 8th and continuing until October 13th. The first sessions address women’s self-protection issues; the last two consider managing finances.

One of our most important tasks this year will be choosing a new WS coordinator. Dr. Diane Krantz will complete her term in June, and we have begun the process of finding a successor. Having already heard from several excellent people interested in the position, we anticipate that the search will be challenging and rewarding.

The Women’s Studies book sale and potluck picnic will be held later than usual. Please reserve Sunday afternoon, October 24th, for fun and fraternizing (sororinizing?). This is a semi-public event open to all who receive this newsletter and their guests.

It’s a great pleasure for us to feature a new core faculty member in this newsletter. Dr. Eva Szalay, Assistant Professor of German, is teaching Research Methodologies (WS 4050) this semester. She manages to change to speaking English as she moves from Building 1 to Social Sciences, after her German grammar, composition and literature classes. Eva’s love of teaching permeates her conversations and drives her to plan ever more ways to educate our students about her many interests in European history, language and feminist perspectives, alone or in collaboration with other foreign language faculty members.

Eva joined WSU mid-way through last year from a Fall 1998 visiting professorship at Georgetown University, having completed her PhD in German Literature at that institution earlier in the year. She also holds an MS in German Literature and has completed graduate training in teaching writing at Georgetown. Her magna cum laude BS in Psychology and German is from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA.

Eva’s strong interest and experience in feminist analysis of German literature provides a wonderful springboard for helping our students incorporate an understanding of the significance of research approaches as they analyze literature and undertake their own projects. Her own research has resulted in numerous lectures and meeting presentations, as well as several forthcoming book contributions and journal articles. She has also authored several book reviews and served as an invited reviewer for journal articles.

During her undergraduate work, Eva was recognized by membership in several honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa, and she stubbornly refused to vacate the Dean’s List at Virginia Polytechnic. Her graduate work was supported by fellowships and scholarships, one of which was a Fulbright award to study at Berlin’s Freie Universitat.

In addition to membership in regional and national professional organizations, Eva was active in service to Georgetown University as a graduate student and now serves on two WSU committees. (I’m sure others will find her soon enough!)

Eva’s enthusiasm extends from the professional to the personal aspects of her life, and she keeps her body from getting rusty by such activities as jogging, hiking ("love the Utah mountain paths"), racquetball, and training for a triathalon. Prior to coming here, she was very active in a Maryland triathalon club and also a biking club. Before graduate school, every summer was filled with "hiking/biking and touring (sometimes in Europe) by rail." A yet-to-be-fulfilled dream is a rail tour of the American West, with extended stops to get to know such places as Santa Fe and Boulder. An avid reader, she is looking to find others who want to read and discuss history, international woman authors, philosophy and cultural studies. The daughter of a ballet teacher (mom) and a psychologist (father), she shared her childhood with a brother, Lorand (now a physical education teacher of autistic children), and a sister, Maria Andrea (into international finance and risk management.) She confesses to another dream that, eventually, they might all join her in making Utah home.

Welcome, Eva; we look forward to many fruitful professional and personal collaborations with you.

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    As we welcome Eva, we bid adieu to Dr. Pam Stenberg of the Chemistry Department, past College of Science Executive Council representative.   Pam has left Weber State to relocate back east, closer to family.  She will be teaching as an adjunct faculty member in the Chemistry Department at Northern University, offering evening sections of organic chemistry.  She would like to maintain contact with her WSU colleagues and has provided her new address - 4 Sargent Rd., Winchester, MA   01890 - hoping to hear from some of us.  We wish Pam all the best!

    This year the Women’s Studies students’ organization sports a new name. No longer the Women’s Studies Student Alliance (WSSA), it is now known as Feminists United Network (FUN) and the new officers, Heather Harris and Michelle Stephens, have plans to live up to the name. Included with our newsletter is a summary of the first meeting’s events; check out the initial discussions and future plans of this energized group. Some FUN activities will be co-sponsored with Information Dissemination, the group that brought us last year’s excellent "Women’s Realities" series, at the YCC. That activity continues fall semester with a central theme - "A Time for Empowerment." ID hopes that discussions will be "very positive, inspiring and, hopefully, motivating." The presentations begin September 22nd with local women activists discussing how their activism has contributed to their empowerment. They will also share thoughts on the possibility of building community empowerment through activism. Confirmed speakers include Diana Lee Hirschi, a long-time activist with Utah Peace Test, and Heather Harris, an activist with Food Not Bombs as well as other local organizations.

10 Sept. - Women’s Studies Fall Retreat, Angelika Pagel’s home, 2 - 6 PM.

13 Sept. - FUN meeting, Grounds for Coffee, 5:30 PM

22 Sept. - Women’s Realities: "Women Acting Up!", Your Community Connection, 6 PM..

FEMINIST UNITED NETWORK

We’re excited to bring to your attention a Weber State student organization whose primary focus is women’s issues. Formerly known as Women’s Studies Student Alliance (WSSA), the Feminists United Network (FUN) held its first meeting of Fall semester on Sept. 2, attended by an energetic collective of eight, including faculty adviser Diane Krantz, FUN president Heather Harris, and vice-president Michelle Stephens.

The first item on the agenda was a name change (from WSSA) as several students felt they wanted something easier to remember and which didn’t seem to exclude male minors or non-women’s studies students. After a collective brainstorm, WSSA became FUN. We’d appreciate any feedback on the new name.

As discussion continued, we reviewed the previous constitution. The main goals of the organization are to humanize the image of feminists, work on feminist issues while combating bigotry and oppression and to develop a network of feminists on campus and in the community. If you would like to see a copy of the constitution, it is available in the Women’s Studies office.

After completing work on the constitution, we went straight to work planning Fall semester’s FUN activities. The possibility of students’ traveling to India during summer 2001 with Priti Kumar was a hot topic. We really want this to happen, so two of our members volunteered to spearhead the trip’s organization and fund-raising. One money-making idea we discussed was putting together a cookbook of yummy recipes sprinkled with insightful word and image art and calling it "Food For Thought." We hope to have this ready for the holidays. We think it will sell if we do it right. Let us know what you think.

We talked about working with another student organization, Information Dissemination, on their continuing Women’s Realities series. Last Spring, the Women’s Studies program co-sponsored the series of six presentations given by a combination of WSU professors and community professionals covering various issues facing women today. There is a tentative schedule for Fall semester available in the Women’s Studies office. Please let us know if you’d like to get involved or attend.

Another project we talked about doing with ID and other student organizations was putting together a student journal, the focus of which would be critical examination of social, political and gender issues through essays, poetry and other written forms of expression.

Obviously, with all these possibilities for action, we’d like more people to get involved. So we’ll be doing some sort of an awareness campaign on campus to let people know we’re here. Along with this, we talked about doing some outreach on feminism itself to dispel the far-too-common fear many seem to have of it.