Pathways: A Century of Women at RIT project materials

A year-long collaboration during the 2007-08 academic year between the RIT Archives, the Women’s & Gender Studies program, and the RIT Women’s Center resulted in a program called Pathways: A Century of Women at RIT. Tina Lent, Becky Simmons, and Donna Rubin served as the steering committee for this event. The objective was to showcase student work that engaged with the history of women and their education on the RIT campus through projects like oral histories, biographies, and interpretive written and/or visual pieces inspired by research in the RIT Archives and other primary sources. Participation in the program was solicited from all eight colleges at RIT, and ultimately all were represented in the final two-hour event held on March 20, 2008.

After months of preparation students shared their research papers and read their poems at a day-long symposium, followed by an opening reception for an exhibition looking at the history of women at RIT until 1944. The exhibition also included student participation and focused on the domestic science and art programs which attracted women students in large numbers. Other ancillary events held during the day were an exhibition of posters and a viewing of videos, all created by female students.