The origins of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program, based on the recollections of Dr. Antoinette Libro, emeritus professor:

The Women’s Studies Program at Glassboro State was founded in 1974 after a few semesters of discussion among an informal committee of interested faculty. This grass roots effort included Pearl Bartelt (Sociology), Erica Frieberger (Foreign Languages & Literature), Elaine Lee (Elementary/Early Childhood Education), Antoinette Libro (Communications), and George Reinfeld (Communications). They were swiftly joined by other faculty members across campus to establish the program.

The first coordinator was Pearl Bartelt, who served from 1974-1978 and eventually became the dean of what was then the Division of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Antoinette Libro then served as coordinator of Women’s Studies from 1978-1986. She created the interdisciplinary Women in Perspective course, the first offered in the new program, and taught it at least once a year throughout the rest of her career at Glassboro State/Rowan University. She also shepherded the course through the curriculum process necessary to make Women in Perspective a General Education course that would reach more students.  Another course developed early on in the Department of Communications was Images of Women in Film. George Reinfeld, another one of the founders of the Women’s Studies Program, also designed Semantics, a course that included a focus on language and sexism that he taught along with several other members of the Department of Communications.

The Women’s Studies Advisory Board encouraged each department involved to develop a course for the concentration, and eventually many did, reflecting the early days of the program, when “consciousness raising” and questions like “where are the women?” were new ideas on campus and it was an exciting time to watch the curtain rise on these issues and this new program.