Goshen College Seeking Out More Men for Its Women’s Studies Courses

Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, enrolls about 900 students. Women make up 60 percent of the undergraduate student body.

The Christian college is changing the name of its women’s studies program to women and gender studies. The name change was made in an attempt to gain more interest in the curriculum among male students on campus.

The change came about after Jan Shetler, professor of history and interim director of the women’s studies program, noticed that there no men enrolled in her class on international women’s history. When she changed the name of the course to Gender and World History, several men took the class and made valuable contributions to class discussions.

Professor Shetler is a graduate of Goshen College and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Florida State University. She is the author of Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present (Ohio University Press, 2007).