During the last two decades higher education institutions in the United States and abroad have been responding to the challenges emerging from the development of women's studies as an academic field, searching for a multidimensional reconstruction of knowledge and new understandings to rectify the exclusion of women from the traditional academic disciplines. The new body of interdisciplinary scholarship on women that has been generated during this period is gradually showing its transformative effects on the traditional curriculum as part of an educational project that is more inclusive and responsive to the issues and realities of gender and racial diversity in U.S. society. At the same time, these educational efforts constitute an integral part of the wider context of our societal efforts to deal with inequality and promote the kinds of social change that further advance this country's democratic goals and principles. Within this framework, the Institute for Research on Women (IROW) and the Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC) here at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY) have received a grant from the Ford Foundation for the curriculum integration project "Incorporating Puerto Rican Women into the Curriculum and Research." The grant is one of over a dozen that Ford has recently provided in a program entitled "Mainstreaming Minority Women's Studies." Our project is aimed at faculty development and training within the Suny-system through a variety of activities conducted by faculty specialists with established records of research and publication on Puerto Rican women in their respective disciplines, and by specialists on race and gender issues.
The particular emphasis on Puerto Rican women in this curriculum and research integration project at the University at Albany stems from the faculty and programmatic strengths in Puerto Rican Studies and Women's Studies at this institution. The Albany campus stands out within the SUNY-system in both of these academic areas which were established almost two years ago. As one of the major research institutions within the SUNY system, Albany has also promoted graduate training and faculty scholarship in these interdisciplinary fields, and is one of a group of selected institutions in which Women's Studies and Ethnic-Racial Studies programs have been able to flourish and engage in many collaborative initiatives throughout the years. The University itself has played a leading role in promoting diversity in the academic experience by its recent approval of a General Education undergraduate requirement in Human Diversity.
Another significant factor in support of this project is the particular demography of New York State and the Northeastern region. Constituting a total of 2.5 million persons, Puerto Ricans represent 13 percent of the New York State population. More than half (54 percent) of the Puerto Rican population in the United States are women, with at least half of the population U.S. born and the great majority residing in the North-east.
The overall objective of the curriculum and research integration project is to offer the opportunity for SUNY faculty to acquire the kind of knowledge and information that will assist them in changing selected courses to incorporate issues of race and gender, and in revising the theoretical and methodological approaches of their respective disciplines to more inclusive approaches that will further enhance their classroom teaching as well as the formulation of their research programs. The targeted disciplinary areas for this project will include the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences.
The project's Faculty Development Seminar will be held during the Summer of 1991. The application process will be open to SUNY faculty statewide and begin in the Fall of 1990. During the 1990-91 academic year preceding the Seminar there will be a lecture series of visiting speakers dealing with Puerto Rican women, as well as faculty exchanges between the University at Albany and the University of Puerto Rico.