1 http://web.mit.edu/gcws/index.html
Purposes:
 advance interdisciplinary women’s studies scholarship
 share institutional resources
 provide graduate courses in WS
 promote faculty development
 build intellectual community
 offer a model of institutional change
Institutional History:
The GCWS began in 1989 as an initiative of directors of WS at different institutions. It began with a goal of creating interdisciplinary team-taught courses that either had not been or could not be taught at universities because of policy complications with cross-listing courses in multiple disciplines. Institutions agreed to grant credit and to use these courses to fulfill their program requirements. Courses are usually either listed as directed studies under a faculty member or as a general GCWS course in the books. If the former, the GCWS teachers give the grade to the faculty in charge of the directed study. The founding institutions were Brandeis, Northeastern
University, MIT, Tufts, Harvard Divinity/Radcliffe, and Boston College. Simmons and UMass
Boston are now part of the consortium as well. First housed at Radcliffe, the GCWS moved to
MIT in 2004.
GCWS’s Relation to Certificate Programs:
The GCWS does not offer a certificate or degree; however, some of the participating institutions do, and GCWS courses count toward them. These certificates are established by and the individual university, not the GCWS.
Funding:
The founding member from Radcliffe was a dean and pitched the idea to the Radcliff executive board of directors, and they “bankrolled” the consortium for the first several years. Since it was also housed at Radcliffe, that institution also provided office space, administrative support/supplies, web services (once the website was developed), and access to classrooms. The consortium also asked for a financial contribution from members; now the contribution is
$10,000 a year. When the housing institution changed to MIT, MIT took over providing office space, etc. All or most of the funding goes to pay the faculty teaching courses.
1 James Stanfill, NU, based on interview with Professor Laura Frader.

Steps to Establish: (estimated time from start to end: approx. 2 years)
1.
Contact writing program directors to figure out what needs and desires existed.
2.
Figure out how to share resources. Involve Provost/Dean
2
.
3.
Explore what you might teach for courses, have brainstorm sessions, and get directors to vet the courses for quality.
4.
Begin offering courses. Have them advertised in universities and departments.
Questions, Issues, and Thoughts for Moving Forward:

The consortium is currently considering a name change. The choice of a name will be especially important for our attempt at a GC if we want it to be considered interdisciplinary and if we want to draw people from various departments (languages, education, linguistics, women’s studies, history, etc.).

Some administration have in the past questioned if faculty are serving the institution’s needs or if they are spending their time on something which does not help the university.
However, this is not the current atmosphere.

There is a sense of a lingering fear that at some point the consortium could be used by administration to reduce the number of faculty. The argument being that if the needs of the university are being met by the consortium, why cover them by the institution’s faculty as well. So far, this has never been an issue.

Harvard was the only institution that never agreed to give credit, but they still advertised the opportunity on a not-for-credit basis. Professors from Harvard have still taught, and students have still taken courses. This issue became more of a limit to that institutions participation than a stumbling block to the success of the consortium.

Perhaps the biggest looming question I have regarding setting this up is what is its purpose? What need is it meeting? If connected to a certificate program in composition, I can see it being much more difficult to justify as an interdisciplinary venture, and its being more difficult to pitch as something which cannot be met within the university. If it is to provide professional development for teaching writers, academic inquiry into language, composition, and communication, and something-else-to-round-out-this-list, then I can see it being an idea which would benefit from this consortium model. So I guess first we’d need to talk about what directors and or people involved in composition
2 When the GCWS was first established only provosts were involved in talks about having courses be credit-bearing; however, administration structures may have shifted in the last fifteen years. Deans may be the more appropriate person to involve in conversations.

we’d want to contact across the universities to gauge interest and discover what needs and desires this consortium can try to meet.