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Administrators at UNC Wilmington plan to strip the Gender Studies and Research Center of its independence and its leadership as part of a wider restructuring effort at the university.
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The university will eliminate the position of director at its Gender Studies and Research Center. The center — which offers a minor in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies — will be brought under the university’s Interdisciplinary Studies umbrella.
The current director of the center, Dana Stachowiak, studies topics like gender justice and transgender inclusivity. They have a doctoral degree in education from UNC Greensboro.
Now, their primary role on campus will no longer exist.
Stachowiak spoke to The News & Observer about the decision’s potential impact on the university and on their work. The center plays a unique role on campus, they said, bridging academic affairs, student affairs, outside partnerships, and campus initiatives such as UPLfT, a leadership program geared toward students who identify as women, nonbinary and transgender. Pronounced “uplift,” Stachowiak described the program as “wildly successful.” Now, they worry what will become of it.
“The loss of independent leadership places many of the [center’s] signature initiatives at risk,” Stachowiak said. “… even if some programs continue to exist, they may not be able to operate at the same scope, consistency, or impact without a dedicated leader.”
Most importantly, Stachowiak said, transgender students, staff and faculty will lose “a central advocate for scholarship, visibility, and institutional support when they lose [the center] as it has been. [It] sends a message that their concerns and experiences are not institutional priorities.”
Stachowiak is one of two professors who teach courses primarily in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies minor. They are also a tenured professor in UNCW’s educational leadership degree program, a role they will return to full-time in July.
The change is part of a reorganization at UNCW that moves 10 distinct programs under Interdisciplinary Studies. Those include minors in Africana Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Digital Humanities, European Studies, Latin American Studies, Middle East and Islamic Studies, Native American Studies, Russian Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Of these programs, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is the only one that was housed under a standalone research center overseen by its own director.
“Serving as director has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my professional career,” Stachowiak said. “I have loved my job every single day that I’ve gone to it, even on the hardest days. But I also deeply value my identity as a professor. So I’m really excited to return to teaching, mentoring students, collaborating with my outstanding colleagues in the College of Ed, and pursuing new research opportunities in my home department.”
Stachowiak’s concern, they said, is not the end of their time as director, but the end of the time when the center had a director at all.
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The university says the Gender Studies and Research Center will now be the domain of the university’s Interdisciplinary Studies director. That role is newly created and open to applicants from across the university — with a start date of July 1.
The Interdisciplinary Studies director will appoint a coordinator for the Gender Studies and Research Center, the university says.
“Decisions regarding program structure and staffing are based on institutional needs, strategic priorities and operational effectiveness,” wrote university spokesperson Sydney Bouchelle in a statement to The News & Observer explaining the decision to eliminate the role.
Stachowiak, they said, felt locked out of that decision-making process.
The justification given to Stachowiak was that the university couldn’t justify funding both a director for the center and the new director of the Interdisciplinary Studies position, they said.
“I understand and respect that university leaders are often required to make difficult decisions, and that there may be considerations of which I’m not aware and do not necessarily need to be aware of in my role,” Stachowiak said. “My primary concern throughout this process of restructuring of the GSRC has been that lack of transparency and collaborative engagement. … It reflects for us a longstanding pattern in which women and trans communities are excluded from conversations and decisions that directly affect their well-being.”
Stachowiak said they’ve heard similar concerns about transparency from other faculty, staff, and students in the wake of this decision.
Todd Berliner, professor of film studies at UNCW and president of the school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the removal of the director of the Gender Studies and Research Center raises several concerns. He says the top-down nature of the decision — a change he said is both managerial and academic — violates shared governance, the principle that ensures faculty a voice in the management of the university.
Berliner said the change might be a reaction to wider political influence.
“In this period when programs addressing the issues and problems of vulnerable people in North Carolina are being eliminated, this change also has the appearance of political expediency,” he wrote. “We don’t want politics and politicians interfering in the free exchange of knowledge in higher education — we don’t want politics and politicians deciding what programs universities have and what they teach.”
The UNC System banned initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion in 2024. Several campuses closed their DEI offices, while others renamed and reorganized them, The N&O reported at the time. UNCW shut down its Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion and shifted some identity and cultural centers into the Division of Student Affairs, The N&O reported.
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