CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

This revised June 1989 grant proposal from the Center for the Study of Women and Society (CSWS) to the Ford Foundation requested support for a project designed to incorporate material by and about women of color (WOC) into introductory courses at the ten senior City University of New York (CUNY) colleges. Project designers wished to encourage and assist full-time liberal arts faculty by offering seven intensive one-week seminars, each one targeting a specific introductory course in American history, American literature, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and English composition. The project designers aimed to provide information and resources for each discipline and establish a formal and active network to continue to promote this integration long after the grant had terminated. The grant would include monthly meetings with invited speakers and discussion groups and monthly newsletters containing teaching experiences and curriculum suggestions. A "Communication Network," consisting of three colleagues per participant that might be responsive to outreach, would also be established. A primary goal of the project was to have as many CUNY faculty members as possible, both male and female, integrate a least some material on women of color into their curricula, and have them understand that they had enough resources to diversify their curricula even if they were not experts on women's, ethnic, or minority studies. The author of the proposal wrote that, all too often, the structure of women's, ethnic, and minority studies reinforced the idea that these were "special topics" and not integral parts of their specific fields of study. Each of the 100 faculty selected to participate in the project would receive a $350 stipend for their work.