USU blazes trails for women
Three years ago, during the fall of 2010, Executive Vice President and Provost Raymond T. Coward merged several programs to create the Center for Women and Gender, an academic unit centered on enhancing prospects for students at USU.
The Center for Women and Gender received an award from the National Council for Research on Women on May 5, along with three other centers nationally.
“The award, it was from the National Council for Research on Women,” said Ann M. Berghout Austin, FCHD director and professor. “The council is made up of universities but also of pretty high-rolling corporate members, quite a few Wall Street members, and what they like to do is to give awards to different centers of women around the country, and one of the awards they like to give is to the newest centers, if they feel that they are demonstrating they are an up and coming center, so that was the name of our award, the Emerging Center Award. They have the ability by virtue of their charter to give this award every year but they don’t.”
Austin said the Emerging Center Award was not awarded last year.
“They have a slate of awards that they can give every year, and they just invite applications for each one of the awards,” Austin said. “Then they go through their applications and they decide whether they’ve got some appropriate recipients for the awards or whether they don’t.”
Austin and her colleague Jamie Huber, the Center for Women and Gender program director, personally traveled to New York City on March 4 to receive the award at New York University the next day, where Austin said they were presented with a surprise.
“There was an afternoon award celebration at New York University where we got the Center Award, and then they told us to stick around for a big celebration dinner they had on Wall Street that night, so we did,” Austin said. “At the Wall Street celebration, there were probably about 700 people there. They acknowledged our center and they had us stand up and that was really cool, and then they said, ‘OK we want to award 22 women with the Trailblazer Award for what they’ve done for women and girls,’ and I was one of them, and I was shocked. I mean I had no idea.”
Huber said Austin was very deserving of the 2013 Trailblazer Award and the entire experience was very rewarding and inspiring.
“I think that both the awards are very well deserved and really highlight the innovative work that the center is trying to bring to Utah State and that it’s comfortable with a lot of institutions nationwide or even exceeding where a lot of institutions nationwide are doing to receive that award, so I encourage students to kind of take advantage of the resources we have here and of our program,” she said.
Austin said she applied for the Emerging Center Award last fall after the National Council for Research on Women’s annual meeting.
“A couple of people on the board said, ‘You know we would like to invite you to submit an application for the Emerging Center Award, but we are also inviting other centers too, a couple of other new centers, so you know, just be aware of that,'” Austin said. “So I submitted an application and we got it.”
USU’s Center for Women and Gender was the only center to receive the Emerging Center Award. The two other centers awarded received the Diversity Award and the Research Award.
“I have great respect for the role that the CWG has assumed on our campus,” Coward said. “Their actions and initiatives have been important to stimulating robust discussions among faculty, staff and students about critical issues that confront our society regarding women and gender. This national award recognized the progress that the center has achieved on our campus and stipulates that the center is a national leader in these matters. I believe that our entire campus should be proud of this recognition and what it represents.”
Emily Snyder, a junior studying exercise science who has been a student assistant at the center for three years, said the Center for Women and Gender’s impact reaches beyond USU’s campus and student body.
“We have a lot of gracious donors who help fund different scholarships and grants and I think with their involvement, it does benefit the community as well,” Snyder said.
Snyder said one of the ways the center does benefit students is an assortment of activities, including lecture series, film series and other events.
“It gives the student body an opportunity to see life in a different perspective,” she said.
Such an event will occur on April 4 in the TSC Auditorium featuring Emily May at 6 p.m.
“My expectation is that the center will continue to assume a critical role on our campus in championing stimulation, rigorous debate and discussion of the most important obstacles in our society that can impede women from achieving their full potential,” Coward said.
– jerawood@aggiemail.usu.edu