Newsletter | May/Jun 1989

Few Women Architectural Faculty at UCB
The Architects for a Diversified Faculty re: Faculty Hiring Practices in the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, state "Many of us have long been appalled by the non-representative number of women faculty members in the departments of architecture, planning, and landscape design at UCB. One direct result is that female students do not have valuable opportunities for role models, mentors, and advocates."
Interest in confronting this issue came out of last summer's OWA Mid-Career Retreat at Westerbeke Ranch. Further interest was generated at the January conference of the California Project (an association of women architects from across the state including AWA of Los Angeles, OWA of San Francisco, and WIA of San Diego).
Goals generated are the achievement of a faculty of women and men in the Department of Architecture that reflects the proportion of women and men in the college and the achievement of a faculty that reflects the diversity of race among the students of the college.
Strategies:
1. Pressure the University to hire women
faculty, both tenured and tenure track.
2. Include the issue of minority representation
on the faculty.
3. Address any imbalance in the number of
female students admitted.
4. Assure that strong and effective women are proposed and elected for new positions.
5. Consider the implications of the new
Department of Architecture currently being formed at UCD.
Tasks planned include surveying faculty and students, profiling hiring practices, determining the experiences of women considered, investigating and identifying key members of the university hierarchy, documenting case histories of women who have taught in the department, surveying former faculty, examining how female students and faculty in the School of Law recently handled a similar problem, and identifying other persons and groups whose experience might contribute to the endeavor.

The Organization had its first meeting in April. Those interested in finding out more about working with this group may contact Nancy Florence, Mui Ho, or Christie Coffin, all listed in the Directory of OWA.
Mui Ho led discussion on Architects for a Diversified Faculty at the April OWA General Meeting. OWA voted to support them in their endeavors.


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