Graduation year: 2010
Majors/Minors: Program of Liberal Studies major, Gender Studies minor
With a generous grant from the Boehnen Fund for Excellence in Gender Studies, I spent the summer between my junior and senior year rewriting the College HAS Issues program for first year students, educating them about the realities of sexual assault on our campus, how they can protect themselves, and how they can prevent this kind of violence from occurring within our community. Using the background and vocabulary I had learned in my Gender Studies courses, I challenged myself to communicate about issues of sexual violence in a way the first year students could understand and wrote a program that was interesting, accessible, and 100% focused on this gender issue. Almost 2,000 first year students saw my program in the first week of the Fall 2010 semester, and Notre Dame will be using my program again at the start of every new academic year.
Current occupation: Yelp Account Executive
Favorite Gender Studies class/professor/memory from your experience at Notre Dame:
I so valued reading and writing material written by WOMEN and people within the LGBT community. It was a welcome fresh perspective and rounded out the PLS canon.
Your experience with Gender Studies/gender issues at Notre Dame:
I was always a feminist but never identified as one until I met people within the Gender Studies community. I realized through getting to know them that my values and what I hold sacred are feminist values - ones of equality for everyone regardless of sex, sexual orientation, etc.