Track B – Women’s Studies

Starting in Fall 2008, MCC’s Honors Institute will become one of the first community colleges in the nation to offer an Honors certificate program with a Women’s Studies concentration.

For both men and women, courses in Women’s Studies encourage the development of empathy, critical thinking and problem solving skills, and the tools necessary to create a respectful and dynamic social environment. Students and faculty will ask questions about how gender influences the way we treat others and how we, ourselves, are treated.

With the growing demand in the professions of law, medicine, social work, and industry for expertise on gender issues, graduates of Women's Studies programs say that their education gave them the confidence to pursue professional careers traditionally held by men. Moreover, students and employers are increasingly recognizing that training in this field is useful on a variety of levels. As noted by the Washington D.C World Watch Institute, “[P]olicies that improve women’s lives can enhance human rights as well as produce a handsome harvest of other effects, such as lower population growth, reduced child mortality, better management of natural resources, and healthier economies.”

By pursuing an honors cohort in Women’s Studies, you will gain unique critical thinking skills that you will be able to apply to coursework in other disciplines, helping you at any stage in your academic career. If transferring to one of the many schools with a certificate program, you will be able to pursue further study in this field. If entering the workforce, you will be better prepared for the challenges of an increasingly diverse environment. No matter what path you pursue, by participating in this cohort, you will experience benefits to your emotional, psychological, and intellectual well-being in classes that seek to deconstruct and pose challenges to the narrowly defined, dominant discourse of gender and sexuality in our culture.