Goals for Student Achievement

Goals for Student Achievement in the Gender and Women's Studies Department

 

students in a classroom

What do we want our majors and minors to accomplish?

The Saint Mary’s College Gender and Women's Studies Department encourages students to examine and analyze women’s lives and constructions and performativities of genders. The program applies an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of women, gender identities, and sexualities. It is guided by feminist activism and feminist theoretical insight into different forms of power, inequality, and privilege. Students investigate the intersectionalities of gender, race, class, sexualities, and other identity categories from historical and contemporary transnational perspectives. Students will develop the skills to affect change in their own lives and in their own communities. Through course content and campus programming, Gender and Women's Studies embodies a commitment to women in all their diversities and reflects our conviction that women must actively define themselves and create knowledge.

The Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) that flow from this philosophy are as follows: 

  1. Knowledge 

    Students recognize and explain: 

    1. the history of feminist movements and women’s contributions to knowledge and achievement.
    2. intersectionalities of gender, race, class, sexualities, and other identity categories from historical and contemporary transnational perspectives.
    3. feminist theoretical concepts and terminology.  
    4. constructions and performativities of genders and sexualities.
       

  2. Skills
     
    Students:  

    1. evaluate sources, analyze discourse, and consider context from a feminist perspective.
    2. use feminist methodologies to conduct research about women, gender identities, and sexualities.
    3. examine and critique cultural representations and claims about women, gender identities, and sexualities.
    4. apply a feminist analysis in more than one discipline.
       
  3. Agency 

    Students: 
     

    1. recognize the necessity of informed feminist advocacy for transformative change 
    2. discern when and how to act as an ally on issues regarding women, gender identities, and sexualities.
    3. work to resist stereotypes around sex, gender, and sexuality.
    4. will work to resist oppression perpetrated by privilege on issues of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and ethnicity.