Milestones for PLU Women
1894 Pacific Lutheran Academy (PLA) employed women faculty members from the beginning. Sophie Peterson is among the first faculty.
1898 Female students Ettie Kraabel and Amanda Swan are among the first to graduate from PLA in June.
1921 Lora Kreidler comes to Pacific Lutheran College (PLC) as a faculty member and dean of women. She quickly becomes one of PLC's most influential people and later is the first woman to have a campus building named for her.
1944 As most men are fighting in World War II, the PLC student body is almost all female. The student body elects its first female president, Agnes Mykland, followed by Eunice Torvend in 1945.
1969 Dress code for women students ends through advocacy from the Association for Women Students, as women are now allowed to wear pants to the dining hall.
1976 Women’s Awareness Week takes place for the first time.
1977 Feminist Student Union is founded (Fall).
1982 Dr. Mary Lou Fenili is appointed Vice President for Student Life. She is the first female officer at PLU.
1983 Funding is allotted for Women's History Week.
1984 First Women’s History Week takes place (March).
1990 The Women’s Center is established in the basement of East Campus (Spring).
1990 PLU offers a minor in Women’s Studies for the first time. Dr. Elizabeth Brusco (Anthropology) serves as the first chair of the Women's Studies Program (Fall).
1992 Women's Center moves from East Campus to the "Little Red House" on Yakima street and the grand opening is celebrated (Fall).
1992 Dr. Becky Frehse, faculty member in the Art department, is given a course release to serve as the first Women’s Center Director.
1994 PLU co-hosts the Northwest Women’s Studies Association Conference.
1995 Judy Mladineo is hired as the second Women’s Center Director (Fall).
1996 Women's Studies Program offers a complementary major (in addition to the minor).
1997 Women's Center sponsors the first Inspirational Women’s Banquet on campus as a part of Women's History Month (March).
1997 Women's Center moves to the "Little Blue House" on lower campus, next to the softball field (Fall).
1998 Judy Mladineo, Women’s Center Director, and Lindsay Daehlin, Women's Studies/Social Work student, form a peer education group to address issues of sexual assault (Fall).
1999 Women's Center organizes the first training of the Sexual Assault Prevention Education Team (SAPET) in February. Approximately ten students complete the training and the first SAPET presentation takes place in Harstad Hall (Spring).
2000 Students Alex Doolittle and Alyssa Wiedenheft direct the first performance of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," held in the Scandinavian Cultural Center on February 14th and 17th.
2004 Bobbi Hughes is hired as the third Women's Center Director (Fall).
2005 Women’s Center is awarded a $300,000 grant from the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women to establish the comprehensive Voices Against Violence program to address and prevent intimate partner violence, sexual assault and stalking. Jennifer Warwick is hired as the first Victim Advocate and Jonathan Grove is hired as the first Men Against Violence Project Coordinator.
2006 Women’s Studies Program becomes the Women’s and Gender Studies Program (Spring). Faculty teach the first WMGS 201 course and the first WMGS majors/minors are declared (Fall).
2006 Women's Center moves to a larger house at 801 121st Street South (Fall).
2007 Department of Justice awards a three-year continuation grant of $300,000 to maintain the Voices Against Violence Program.
2008 Men Against Violence Program hosts the national conference “He Loves Me, He Loves me Not: Men's Role in Ending Violence Against Women” (Fall).
2010 PLU, Stanford & UCLA are the only West Coast universities to be recognized by a visit from the Assistant Attorney General in honor of their leadership in campus programming on violence against women (Spring).
2010 Women's Center celebrates its 20th Anniversary with a fabulous gala. To mark the milestone, the Katherine Kandel & Elizabeth Oleksak scholarship for the Women's Center is established (March).
2010 Department of Justice awards another three-year continuation grant of $250,000 to maintain the Voices Against Violence Program.
Sources: http://www.plu.edu/archives/Timeline/index.html; oral interviews conducted by Haley Nelson (class of 2009)
