Terri Stankiewicz, Samira Rajabi and Joanne Belknap of the Chancellor's Committee on Women (Photo/Larry Harwood)

The Chancellor"s Committee on Women (CCW) is an informed advocacy group for all women on campus—classified and unclassified staff, tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, and administrators. To this end, we have a tri-chair leadership with a student, staff, and faculty chair. We recently chose an entirely new tri-chair group. Samira Rajabi is an undergraduate student double-majoring in business management and French, and is currently in her junior year. Terri Stankiewicz is the manager of Facilities Management Human Resources. She"s been at CU for over four years. Joanne Belknap is a faculty member in both sociology and women"s studies and is a research associate in the Institute of Behavioral Science.

As a representative committee of women across campus, our collective experience is diverse and proactive, and we are committed to the following ongoing goals: (1) we monitor the status of women on campus, (2) we recommend policy to create significant change, (3) we work to assure justice and equity for women at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Every other year we conduct a study on the climate of women on campus. This year we are planning to do another one of these studies. The goal is to solicit women students, faculty, staff and administrators to identify issues and concerns, need for change, opportunities and so on. Thus, we don"t define the problems; we ask a wide range of women on campus to inform us of challenges and discrimination in their experiences at CU.

A couple of weeks ago we had an all-day planning retreat, with a focus on welcoming new members, the beginning of a new set of tri-chairs, and brainstorming about our goals for the 2006-2007 academic year. We are grateful for the leadership and support of women offered by outgoing Interim Chancellor, Dr. Phil DiStefano. He provided an open-office policy and showed genuine support of women and gender issues on campus. We are looking forward to getting to know and working with the new CU Chancellor, Dr. Bud Peterson.

Unlike any other committee or organization reaching out to women on campus, the CCW is inclusive of women across campus. Other committees, centers and organizations typically focus on “just” faculty, “just” students, “just” staff or “just” administrators. We are also dedicated to the differences among women at CU-Boulder based on such characteristics as race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, religion and nationality. We are cognizant that women have varying experiences in their work and education climates at CU, and hope to be a conduit with the Chancellor to not only identify different women"s issues, but to promote for meaningful changes. We are eager to hear from all women on campus and encourage anyone to contact one or all of the tri-chairs (terri.stankiewicz@colorado.edu, samira.rajabi@colorado.edu, and joanne.belknap@colorado.edu).

For more information, visit the CCW Web site