Who We Are

Collage of historical photos with text overlay reading

Seattle University & Planned Parenthood

A TIMELINE OF RECENT EVENTS WITH ARCHIVAL MATERIALS

This archive is part of an ongoing project to both preserve the records of Women & Gender Studies at SU and to make this information widely accessible. 

Seattle University & Planned Parenthood

Students

Student Advisory Council

Anneliese Stahly-Dronkowski

Abrianna (Pie) Wright††

††ex officio KXSU 102.1 FM 

Departmental Honors

Katya Ekimoto | 2010
Sean O’Neill | 2010
Clare Obradovich | 2011
Wynn Barnard | 2012
Erika Bailey | 2013
Jolyn Kelsch | 2014
Haley Hanson | 2015
Sarah Tucker| 2015
Mia Walsh | 2015
Ashton Corson | 2016
Alyssa Lund | 2016
Trinity Covington | 2017
Gabriel Ferri | 2017
Eva Cerretani | 2018
Edith Guzman| 2018
Ames Zocchi | 2019
Hannah Lang | 2019
Natalie Castillo | 2020
Leah Dooley | 2020
Falen Wilkes | 2020
Ariana Siddiqui Dennis | 2021
Natalie Rahn | 2021
Matthew Albright | 2022
Taylor Kaili McKenzie | 2022
Ari Moore | 2022

 Kristin Leigh Roach Scholarship

Image of the late Kristin Leigh Roach

Kristin Leigh Roach was born on December 25, 1984 and left us on April 25, 2006. She was a force of nature and had a tremendous amount of accomplishments during her 21-year-old life. She joined many clubs and organizations at Seattle University, and participated in Tijuana Mission, the Jazz Band, the Collegium Staff, the Seattle University Choir and was part of the Collegium Staff. She was a softball and soccer player throughout her life, and was able to communicate across race, social class and gender as well as people of diverse backgrounds beautifully. She was inclusive and delightful, and managed to do everything she did with great class and enthusiasm. At the time of her passing there was not yet a major in W&GS, but had there been one, she would have majored in it.

We are grateful to her family for their unstinting generosity which has made it possible for students to pursue their major in Women and Gender Studies.

Recipients of the Kristin Leigh Roach Scholarship are Anneliese Stahly-Dronkowski and Samantha Grande.

 

Patricia WismerPhoto of Patricia Wismer

Patricia (Trish) Wismer (1949-93), the namesake for the Wismer Center and the Wismer Professorship of Gender & Diversity, was professor of Theology and Religious Studies. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago (1983) and taught at the College of Wooster and the University of Notre Dame before coming to Seattle University in 1988. Her intellect and passion for gender justice inspires our work.

 

The Wismer Center

The Wismer Center (Loyola 400) is a focal point for students, faculty, and staff to meet, plan events, celebrate victories, work on papers, brainstorm new courses, hash out the nuances of a new article or book, grab a snack, and put their minds to what matters. But before it was the Wismer Center, it was the Women's Resource Center, which Betsey Barker-Klein described as a windowless closet with a drab green filing cabinet and lit by light bulb dangling from the ceiling in the basement of Loyola. Professor Connie Anthony (Political Science) was named the first Director in the spring of 1991 and served as the founding director (1991–92). That year, the Women’s Resource Center, sponsored several campus forums on feminism with faculty, staff, and student presenters. These events tapped into the kind of repressed energy that the first Her!Story awards did and marked the heightened recognition of the work of feminist and gender scholars and activists. The Center was renamed the Wismer Center after Trish’s death in 1993. Associate Provost Toni Murdock head a national search for a staff, rather than faculty hire, to direct the Center and hired Victoria Kill, who also taught in the English Department. The Wismer Center closed in 2001 and the money that ran the Center was used to finance the Wismer Professor of Gender & Diversity.

 

Her!Story Awards

These annual awards honored faculty and staff on campus who had been doing the work of gender and advocating for women since the 1970s and 1980s, notably Betsey Barker-Klein, Judy Sharpe (Student Housing), Jean Bushman (Nursing), Harriett Stevenson (Business and Economics). The first two years of these awards honored women who had been working in the shadows were now identified and celebrated.

Award Recipients