The University of Maine
The President's Council on Women
Minutes
March 24,2006
Present: Sharon Barker, Ann Schonberger, Jean MacRae, Sue Estler, Cathie Berardelli, Dianne King, mary Cathcart, Diane Genthner, Sandy Butler (recording)
Announcements
Ann S. updated us on various Women's History Month events.
Sharon B. asked us to discuss the practice of the President's office sponsoring
tables at various women's organizations' events (e.g. Maine Women's Fund, Maine
Women's Lobby). She has brought this up before, but wondered if we
shouldn't have a more deliberate policy on how this is done. After
considerable discussion, it was decided that we should write up a recommendation
that the President's Office continue to support the annual awards ceremony of
the MWF, the Breakfast of Champions of the MWL, and to continue to be an
institutional sponsor of American Association of University Women. In
addition it was decided that we should recommend that the annual functions of
local women's agencies (Spruce Run, Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center, and
Rape Response Services) should also be sponsored by the University at their
annual events, as well as another statewide women's organization: Women, Work
and Community. Sharon and Sandy will get together in May to write up that
recommendation.
Debriefing Meeting with the President
We had some good discussion about the meeting we had with the president on
February 13. We discussed the value of coming up with a few focused
recommendations, as he suggested. We decided that many of the
recommendations would be similar to those that have been put forward in the past
by other groups of women on campus (e.g., the Task Force on Women in the late
1980s produced a substantial document with over 100 recommendations [one of
which was to created the Council] and more recently the vision 2000 was drafted
by New England Council on Land Grant University Women). It was decided
that perhaps a good way to initiate more dialogue about the status of women on
campus in this time of reactionary backlash might be to invite individual
administrators to our meetings next year in order to hear from them about what
they believe they are doing to improve the status of women on campus. We
would provide them with copies of the documents mentioned above to find out how
they think past recommendations have been addressed. Some of the suggested
guests were: President Kennedy, the Provost, the VP of Research, the VP of
Development, VP of Finance, the Dean of Students.
We also discussed whether to follow up on President Kennedy's invitation to hold an event at the President's House in order to bring attention to the Council and women on campus. After some discussion we decided to see if it would be possible to hold the tea which Ann and Sharon typically do for women who have been promoted or who are retiring, but to do it at this house rather than at Fernald Hall. Sandy will investigate with the President's office whether a date can be arranged, and Sharon and Ann will work on the invitation list. This will be a tea to honor women's accomplishments.
PCW Website
We discussed how we might use the PCW website more fruitfully. Sandy has
been in contact with Cindy Lilley about updating the site with current
membership and this year's minutes. It was suggested that we might want to
add some of the historical documents such as the nonsexist language policy
(which Jean M later found on the University handbook website) and the Task Force
on Women document from the 80s (which would need to be scanned in).
Another Meeting with the President
We decided to take Bob Kennedy up on his suggestion to meet again this year.
Sandy will try to arrange a meeting for mid May. We will discuss with him
our plan for bringing administrators in to speak with the Council next year.
April Meeting
In April we will have speakers (Janet Waldron, Robin Toderian, and Maggie
Palmer) come to update us about the recent changes in the Women's Program at the
Cutler Health Center. We will also use some of the meeting to discuss
three readings (on campus climate and diversity) which Susan Iverson provided
for us. She will facilitate this discussion. If you plan to be at
the April meeting and did not get copies of these readings today, please let
Sandy Butler know how she can get you copies.
Agenda Items not Discussed
As Pauleena was unable to be at the meeting, we did not talk about her idea
regarding conducting an oral history project on the experiences of women on
UMaine campus. Perhaps we can take that up in April or May. We also
did not discuss next year's co-chairs. Pauleena and Sandy are willing to
do it a second year, but then the Council will be in the same position of
needing two new chairs for the following year. So if we wanted to have
overlap as has been the practice in the past, either of us is willing to give up
our seat to someone who could carry on in the 2007-08 year.