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A Molder of Women Leaders Faces Big Changes

Posted on: Monday, 29 August 2005, 03:01 CDT

NEW BRUNSWICK

A lumnae of Douglass College in New Brunswick have long held that the school's nurturing environment helped them develop their capabilities in a way that a co-ed setting wouldn't have. Now, a group of graduates of the woman's college of Rutgers University will have a chance to demonstrate the leadership skills they picked up at their alma mater: They are fighting a plan to create a single large liberal arts college by merging Douglass with Rutgers College in New Brunswick and Livingston College in Piscataway.

The plan, proposed in mid-July by the Rutgers University Task Force on Undergraduate Education, would create one large university with multiple campuses in a move to slash bureaucracy. The task force said the move would simplify the process of applying to the state university's various schools and make it possible to unify the rules on all the campuses.

But some Douglass alumnae say this organizational change would destroy the spirit of the 87-year-old school, the country's last public all-women's college. They want Douglass to remain free of men and separate from other undergraduate units.

If the university chooses to go ahead with this plan, it would be one more blow to the woman's college movement. Forty years ago there were nearly 300 such institutions; now there are only about 60. The gang from Douglass has launched a Website, www.savedouglasscollege.org, and posted banners about their campaign in New Brunswick. They want their message to be heard as the university prepares for September hearings on the reorganization plan.

"The proposal to transform Douglass College into a mere residential campus effectively signals the demise of the four-year women's college experience at Rutgers," says Sheila Kelly Hampton, president of the alumnae association. "We are prepared to fight to ensure that the supportive learning environment of Douglass College remains an opportunity for the young women of today and tomorrow."

Hampton's group includes a number of successful businesswomen, many of whom say their experiences at Douglass shaped their careers. In addition to programs that encouraged leadership and volunteerism, they appreciated the coziness of Douglass, where faculty and the dean could know most of the 3,000 students by name. Like graduates of other women's schools, they say the all-female atmosphere was less competitive than at neighboring Rutgers.

Cordon and Martin want other women to experience the supportive atmosphere of an all-female college.

"You're learning in a nurturing, caring environment where there's an interest in your development," says Tina Gordon, 54, executive director of corporate communications for Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick. She compares it to a game of tennis with men. "If you're playing with a bunch of men, they would just want to beat you; they would only want to win," she says.

In fact, studies show that students who attend women's colleges have more opportunities to hold leadership positions than they would at co-ed schools; they're more likely to major in traditionally male disciplines like the sciences than their counterparts at co-ed schools, and once they graduate they tend to be more successful in their careers.

The move to reorganize the schools would not mean that Rutgers trains fewer women for high-level careers, says Linda L. Stamato, associate executive director at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and a former acting dean of Douglass. She says women no longer need their own colleges to advance and that the change would "open Douglass' leadership training programs to all 13,000 women at Rutgers-New Brunswick/Piscataway."

Concerned Douglass grads are not above invoking the power of the purse and some question how generous they'd feel if Douglass were no longer a women's school. Between 1998 and 2004, Douglass alumnae, foundations and others gave the school $29 million. M. Wilma Harris, for example, gives $2,500 a year to Douglass with a matching grant from Prudential Financial, where she's vice president of human resources for the insurance division.

"I wouldn't give to Rutgers," says Harris, 60. "I donate to organizations that are philosophically in sync with my values."

Harris says experiences at Douglass taught her skills used in her job at Prudential, where she works on staff development and talent- management issues for 200 employees. She says she learned how to manage resources in 1964 when she got involved in a campaign to save the Corwin Residence Hall for use as student housing. "You leverage all the resources available to you," she says.

Harris says she learned about the importance of volunteering by participating in the college's Students Offer Services (SOS), a program that worked with youth groups. There, she saw competent women taking charge. "It gave us a sense of accountability to the community," says Harris, a 1966 graduate. "We had to make decisions, manage budgets. That's what leadership is all about."

Harris

Another alum, Cristina Martin, recalls that Douglass offered opportunities she might have missed at a larger school. While a junior, she was editor of the school's weekly paper, the Caellian, where she led a staff of 30. "The odds of my getting to be editor- in-chief at a large, co-educational school would have been greatly diminished," says Martin, a 1994 graduate who now directs business development at SunGard SCT, a Pennsylvania-based provider of software to colleges and universities.

And Martin got a crash course in leadership when she ran a session on how to prepare high school students for college. She faced 50 teenagers at a women's conference, eager to know the ins and outs of succeeding at a university. Then the dean asked her to speak to 300 attendees about the conference. "I believed I could do it all," says Martin, 32. "There's a feeling of empowerment that comes after attending Douglass."

Successful alumnae launch a campaign to stop Douglass College from going co-ed

A Tradition of Achievement

Leonie Brinkema U.S. District Court judge who presided over the trial of 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui (Class of 1966).

Patricia Campbell research scientist with California drug firm Alza, who was instrumental in developing adhesive patches used for drug delivery (Class of 1963).

Carol Christ president of Smith College, a private liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts and past provost of the University of California at Berkeley (Class of 1966).

Janet Evanovich New York Times bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum series (Class of 1965).

Jeanne Fox president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (Class of 1975).

Jaynee LaVecchia New Jersey Supreme Court justice (Class of 1976).

Barbara Leonard Krumsiek CEO of the Calvert Group, a provider of socially responsible mutual funds (Class of 1974).

Shireen Lewis executive director of EduSeed, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that encourages women of color to pursue higher education and life-long learning (Class of 1986).

Yolanda Jones Mapp physician and former Temple University professor of medicine (Class of 1953).

Janet Lippe Norwood renowned economist who advised several U.S. presidents (Class of 1945).

Candy M. Torres engineer at Barrios Technology, a firm in Houston that supports NASA's international space station progam (Class of 1976).

Rosemarie Truglio, vice president of education and research at Sesame Workshop, develops curriculum for the "Sesame Street" television program (Class of 1983).

E-mail to jnelson@njbiz.com

Copyright Snowden Publications, Inc. Aug 15, 2005

Source: NJBIZ

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