WHITTIER TAKES SNAPSHOT AS
TITLE IX CELEBRATES 35TH YEAR-IN-ACTION 
College continues to strive towards supporting women in achieving their academic, athletic, and co-curricular goals.   

The year 2007 marks the 35th anniversary of the passage of the landmark Title IX, a critical amendment prohibiting sexual discrimination in schools in an effort to ensure true gender equality within the country's educational system. Typically, rhetoric about this legislation has been focused on sports programs, but its intent and impact carries across all aspects of an educational institution. Following is a snapshot of how Whittier College is measuring up, according to the dean of faculty and dean of students, as well as the athletic director.

“The Civil Rights and Women’s Movements of the late 60s spawned legislation such as Title IX, leading to an increase in the participation of women in higher education,” says Dean of Faculty Susan Gotsch, who also serves as vice president for academic affairs at the College. “Perhaps nowhere is this more evident at Whittier than in the gender composition of the faculty.  Over half of Associate and Assistant Professors are women—women who chose to pursue Ph.D.s beginning in the 1980s. 

“Among students, women consistently stand out as recipients of laude honors at Commencement,” adds Gotsch. “They win departmental and college awards, and notably, both recent Whittier recipients of the prestigious Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowships (of which 20 are given nationally) are women.”

Reviewing the residential and co-curricular programs at the College, Dean of Students Jeanne Ortiz reports: "With an overall student enrollment of 1300 students, women are consistently playing a key leadership role inside and outside the classroom. For example during the 2006-07 year, of the 65 active student organizations, 70 percent were led by women. Undergraduate women provided leadership to all of the College's media outlets, radio, newspaper, and yearbook, last year. Additionally, the five women's societies have consciously built leadership training into their new member education programs."

Just this past year in athletics, notes Athletics Director Rob Coleman, Whittier College committed to adding two new full-time coaching positions for the sports of women’s water polo and women’s soccer.  Both candidates selected were women coaches with terrific resumes, and each will be a wonderful role model for our female student-athletes.  There is little doubt that Whittier is providing the proper amount of teams (10) and opportunity to our female contingent on campus.  Alison Biggs, a recent graduate (Class of 2006) and four-year women’s volleyball veteran, stated it best when she said, “When our careers as Whittier athletes end, we know that we’ve done something that few have had the privilege of doing: playing the sport that we love at the college of our choice.”

Coleman adds: ”In today’s society of financially strapped athletic departments that face the choice of eliminating men’s teams to reach athletic ‘gender equity,’ Whittier College has worked hard—and will continue to work harder—to assure that equality is spread throughout the entire athletic program.”

For more information about Whittier College, please contact the Office of Communications, 562.907.4912, or the Office of Admission, 562.907.4238.