Iowa State University Committee on Women

October 1996 Meeting Minutes

October 10, 1996

Present: Brooks, Bystrom, Chervinko, Conner, Espinoza, Evans, Galyon, Henning, LaVille, Miller, Morgan, Naylor-Ojurongbe, Phye, Rasnak, Theile, Vivian

Announcements

Nancy reminded the group that the week of October 7 was Women's Week on campus, as well as Week Without Violence and "Coming Out Week."

Chair's Report

Nancy reported that she had already received several responses to the survey sent out with the registration packet for this year's Way Up conference. She indicated that the responses were very interesting and would hopefully be of substantial use to the committee in its recommendations concerning the Way Up Conference for future years. It was noted that ISU did not have any presenters at this year's conference.

It was announced that Dean Crabtree would be retiring June 30. This prompted a brief discussion about the membership of the Diversity Steering Committee. Brooks reported that she had requested a listing of the current membership of that committee.

The chair moved away from the written agenda order of business because so many people had to leave the meeting early. She moved to the discussion portion of the agenda.

Discussion

Celia announced that there would be 3 Women in Touch presentations this year and that speakers had been secured for all three. Two of the speakers, Carla Espinoza and Dianne Bystrom, are members of UCW. A brochure detailing the series will be mailed out in the near Future. Brooks reported that a priority of hers would be to sponsor a survey of women on campus to determine what issues are of importance and use this data in planning future programs. It was suggested that the members of the Special Events subcommittee assist with this task. Rita Conner volunteered her services and expertise in compiling the data since this was something she has done through her studies in Sociology.

Carla was asked to speak about her role as Interim Affirmative Acction Officer at ISU. Some highlights of her comments:

Affirmative action is not exclusively an ethnic issues; women are making advances in terms of promotions, but not in salaries.

She will be studying the area of student affirmative action efforts to determine where we've been.

The search for a director of affirmative action will come after the search is completed for associate director.

She is not comfortable with the ISU statement on ADA and will be looking into a revision during the next 4-6 months.

President Jischke has been very supportive of her and given good advice.

Searches

Nancy indicated that Tanya Zanish would be representing UCW on the search committee for the Director of University Relations and that they hoped to have a pool of candidates by mid-November.

Carla asked if anyone from UCW would be serving on the affirmative action Director search and getting no response, indicated that she would check to see if there was or could be UCW participation.

Women's Studies

Linda Galyon indicated that the search for a new director would be going forward and that the Dept. of History would be the tenure dept. of the new director. She also advised that the Provost had announced there would be 4 new diversity hires and that the Women's Studies program had forwarded proposals for 3 positions.

Task Forces

It was announced that there would be a meeting of the Race Task Force on Wednesday, October 16, from 1-2 in the Memorial Union.

Survey

Nancy asked for general discussion on the types of things to be include in the survey to determine topics for the Women in Touch Series. Some topics include work environment, age discrimination, profession opportunities. She asked for volunteers to help draft the survey vehicle.

The meeting adjourned at 11:45 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Jane Henning