DISSEMINATION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Conference presentations
Anne Wiley, our faculty liaison, arranged two conference appearances during 2004 for the Women's Services Team. Rosemarie Freeland, Suzanne McGowan and Anne Wiley presented at two conferences. The first entitled, Conflict and Activism: The intersection of student development and feminist curriculum, was presented at the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) Conference, February 26-29, 2004 in Philadelphia, PA; the second entitled, Activism and Conflict: Women empowering women was presented at the Massachusetts Community College Conference on Teaching, Learning, and Student Development, March 31, 2004 in Haverill, MA. The thrust of both presentations was activism and conflict, emphasizing the roles that college faculty and professional staff play in empowering women. Descriptions of racist, sexist, and homophobic incidents that occurred in the institution, in the classroom, and in the Women's Resource Center were used as illustrations of conflicts that prompt modeling an activist stance toward problem solving. Contact Anne Wiley for additional information.

Another powerful example of women empowering women took place on February 19, 2004 when Eve Ensler's award winning play, The Vagina Monologues, was staged at Greenfield Community College. In this case, the local production, as part of VDAY campus productions [vday.org] and coordinated by Anne Wiley, brought Amherst College students who performed with Greenfield Community College students, faculty and staff. The show was performed as a benefit. The Women's Resource Center at GCC and the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition, a battered women's shelter, were the beneficiaries. Both humorous and very serious, this is a show that speaks pointedly to the violence experienced by women all over the world on a daily basis.

Evaluation
An internal evaluation was conducted on the Women in Transition Services and the Women's Resource Center during 2002-2003. The purpose was to examine the efficacy of the services that include the specialized course sections for women in transition; the use of the Women's Resource Center; the career counseling and specialized advising services; and the internal and external resource and referral system in place to promote student success. The data collection focused on two years from 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 because the staffing patterns of a Women's Resources Center and Women In Transition Counselor were more consistent in the hours designated to the services. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected and analyzed. The qualitative data consisted of individual interviews of faculty, staff, administrators and students as well as an interview of a student focus group. Analysis of quantitative data on student profiles, support service types and delivery and use of the Women's Resource Center were also examined. The research effort led to recommendations for internal and external publicity, admissions, enrollment and advising center, Women's Resource Center and support services, and course section delivery. In general, recommendations call for more internal communication with faculty and advisors as well as more administrative support in data collection, analysis and use. Suggestions for improvement in publicity include more outreach to GCC staff and faculty; improved distribution of written materials and possible revisions of our web page. Recommendations for admissions and initial advising suggest better referrals and notification to the WI/WRC staff of students who need serviced and improved communication directly to students regarding services and assistance. Suggestions for the WRC include that the space be enlarged permeated many of the remarks. For a copy of the report or summary PowerPoint presentation, contact Anne Wiley.

Past dissemination

In the course of the last few years, Anne Wiley, Ed.D., the WIT faculty researcher, spearheaded a successful schedule of conference presentations for the WIT team. These included:

• an in-house workshop at the GCC Professional Development Day,
• presentations in April 2000 and 2002 at the Conference on Teaching and Learning in Massachusetts Community Colleges, and
• two presentations at National Women's Studies Association(NWSA) entitled, Women in Transition: Exploring Ways to Promote Success with Community College Students, a workshop presented at the (NWSA) 21st Annual Conference, Simmons College, Boston, MA and Women Helping Women: Women's Resource Center at a Rural Community College at NWSA in Minneapolis MN in June 2001.

These conference presentations permitted faculty, staff and students to showcase the WIT program model, materials and a video on the history and services of the Women's Recourse Center. The NWSA conferences, primarily servesinstitutions granting the bachelor's degree. Our presentations provided the opportunity to showcase a focus on community colleges in the organization and planning stages of serving nontraditional women in college. This was especially important given that thevast numbers of women begin their college education at the associate's degree level. Finally, in June 2002, continuing presentations at national conferences, the WIT team will present Welfare Moms and the Media at the How Class Works Conference at SUNY at Stonybrook, NY.

Gender Equity Outreach

On November 16, 2000, WIT co-sponsored a Women & Technology Conference, designed for high school teachers, students and guidance counselors. Approximately 20 staff and 80 young women from 8 area high schools attended the day-long event. The purpose was to encourage high school age women to take advantage of technological education and opportunity. Jobs abound in technology fields, but women are still ambivalent about technology and the number of women in undergraduate computer science programs has been dropping. Interestingly enough, although response to the GCC event was positive, significant feedback indicated that the target audience really should be middle-school girls. Another conference was held on June 1, 2001 and served girls and their teachers from area public schools, grades 6-8. Additionally, Gender Equity Outreach has been sustained through the review and updates of the Western Massachusetts Vocational Gender Equity website.

Future directions

Women in Transition (WIT) services
Programs like this take root slowly. The Women in Transition (WIT) services are designed to meet the individual needs of the variety of returning adult women, entering or re-entering college. Women who use the Women's Resource Center may or may not be enrolled in courses that are reserved for WIT. Women registered for WIT course sections may or may not use the counseling/advising services and may or may not need or want help from the Women's Resource Center Outreach Advocate. In the spring of 2000 there were 50-55 women with connections to WIT; as of December 30, 2000 there were 90-95 women who made connections with the WIT and WRC programs and services. During the spring 2001 semester, women coming into the WRC were all asked to log in, to provide more clarity about usage of the space. Such evaluation and documentation efforts are expected to continue in the future.

Gender equity outreach
Collaborative efforts will continue with projects working with GCC's division of K-12 outreach, providing gender equity training to teachers and students in area public high schools. Additional efforts will continue to make contributions to the Work4Women which describes non traditional occupations for girls and women as well as focuses on equity in the workplace..

Revisioning Families Project
The Great Welfare Debate/Testimonies Project has been partially supported by the Mary Stewart Rogers Foundation. It is an outreach project of the Women's Resource Center. During the past year, 2001-2002, the project has showcased the video arts project of a WIT/WRC student, Catherine Stryker, entitled: The Great Welfare Debates at several local, regional and national locations.

The projects hopes to expand its oral testimonies project and use the classroom and community as arenas for education, dialogue and media arts expression around the interrelated themes of welfare and class inequality in our time. The WIT/WRC staff will work collaboratively with other faculty from GCC and the Five Colleges as well as staff from community organizations to identify and subsequently collect testimonies from individuals who experience living on welfare, in poverty and as working-poor in rural Franklin County. As higher education is charged with the mission of creating and conveying critical knowledge about society, this project calls on college/high school and community educators to collaborate in developing curriculum that engages students and community members to think about the workings of economic class in their own lives and how it affects their families and wider communities. From this critical reflection, learners will use media arts to represent their own understandings of economic inequality in the US. The intention is to widely distribute via public presentations and media stories about the current poverty conditions in our rural county.