The Certificate in Gender Studies gives students the methodological and theoretical tools to analyze gender’s role and significance in the social, political, and personal formation of the human person. Students will explore gender through various lenses, such as the arts, humanities and social and natural sciences. Gender Studies aims to provide its students with a critical framework in which the analysis of gender and all it entails can be imaginatively and empathetically applied to students’ public and private lives.

Requirements of the Certificate Program (include both course requirements, completion requirements, and any student eligibility requirements):

1. Students must take five courses to fulfill the Certificate in Gender Studies.
2. At least three of the five courses must be outside their major.
3. Courses must cover at least three different academic disciplines. 
4. Students who wish can count an internship or service learning experience specifically focused on gender as one of their five courses.  This requires advance planning and conversation with the certificate coordinator, and an academic paper.
5. Students are eligible to select participation in the Gender Studies certificate at any time.  They must, however, register with the certificate coordinator by end of the drop add period in the fall of their senior year.
6. Students need to complete all five courses by the end of their senior year with a minimum grade of 2.0, and they must achieve at least a 2.33 grade point average for the courses presented for the certificate.
7. Students will be required in the second semester of their senior year to write an essay and pass an oral examination, both of which connect courses they took in Gender Studies and answer these specific questions:

Exam Question A)  What text, conversation, or experience has highlighted for you most strongly the meaning and significance of gender in human relations and society?

Exam Question B)  Discuss the impact of gender in three different disciplines and explain how it affects these disciplines overall.

The comprehensive oral examination uses the students’ answers to these questions as starting points and branches into specific questions taken from the courses that students took to complete the certificate. Examiners will include instructors of gender studies courses, and they will assign the pass/fail grade.

In order to make the certificate possible for students, at least one gender-related course should be offered every semester, and each year there should be gender-related courses offered in humanities, social and/or natural science departments. All relevant departments would need to offer a course in their discipline at least every two to three years. The certificate director will actively review suggested course syllabi and add or delete courses as necessary. 

Possible courses include:
CJ361: Women and Crime
CJ367 Special Topics:  Women in Prison
EC222: Women and Men in Business
EN104: Various topics (The Warrior in Literature, 20th-century American Fiction by Women Writers, The Male Image in Literature, Reading and Writing About Family) (this course may not be repeated in order to fulfill the certificate requirements)
EN325:  Gender and Communication
EN336: Jane Austen
EN338: The Brontës
EN370: Literature and Gender (to be developed)
FA Special Topics: Women Artists
FA Special Topics: The Family in Art and Film
FR371: French Women Writers
FR Special Topics: Masculinity in French Literature
HI359: American Women’s History
HI390: Comparative Women’s History
PY207: Psychology of Gender
PO353: Politics of Diversity
SO205: The Family
SO309: Gender and Society
SO342: Structures of Social Inequality
TH330: Women in the Catholic Tradition