What follows is an impressionistic overview of our program's first twenty five years, derived in part from our archives and in part from our collective recollections, and written by the current program director. As with any celebratory institutional history, it makes no claim to objectivity. Our aim is to look back at the main lines of our growth and development, and in so doing to acknowledge many of the individuals who have contributed to the building of the program over time.

We gratefully acknowledge the work of our first archivist, UMass Women's Studies / Sociology graduate dian fitzpatrick who, in the mid-1980s, created program archives out of our old files. If we have inadvertently omitted names or contributions in this overview, we hope to be forgiven the lapse of memory and to be reminded of what we have forgotten. We promise to remedy the error on the next appropriate commemorative occasion!