BECOMING A POWERFUL LEARNER: HOW TO USE DIVERSITY TO MAXIMIZE ONE'S LEARNING
These brief awareness sessions focus on gender-based stereotyping in classrooms and labs and differential expectations toward male and female faculty members. The sessions are conducted by Dr. Dorothy Miller, Director of the Center for Women, and a Ph.D. student from the department of Organizational Behavior.
The goals of these sessions are to:
- • create awareness of gender role assumptions and expectations
- • increase understanding of how social structure is a factor in the development of gender roles
- • introduce to students how they can be involved with equitable solutions to the problems that gender stereotyping causes
Presentation of research-based factual information is combined with discussions of personal experience in sessions for both graduate and undergraduate students. Quotations such as the following from Case's Resource Equity Study are discussed:
"...they [students] expect this nurturance. I have a lot of students come to my office and argue with me about grades in a sort of threatening manner."
Case female faculty member
"I have students come into my office thinking I must be the department assistant and ask where the professor is. I am the professor!"
Case female faculty member
"Unlike the other students, I find that there is a problem with gender inequality here in XX… I didn't speak up because I didn't want my fellow students looking down on me… I appreciate what your program is trying to do…tell the class next time about what I wrote in this email, so that they know that someone sitting in that very room has experienced gender inequalities. But please, do not tell them who I am."
Female student, after a session
Please contact Dr. Miller at 368-0985 or dorothy.miller@case.edu to schedule sessions.
