Women's Resource Center Begins Second Year

by Mary Franklin

SOCORRO, N.M., August 19, 2002 -- The Women's Resource Center (WRC) at New Mexico Tech is not a real place where women can come together and relax. There are no chairs or couches or tables. Instead, the WRC at New Mexico Tech is a virtual meeting place where women can come together to discuss issues or get information.

The WRC has been on-line with a web page called Connexions since August 2001 (http://www.nmt.edu/~women/). Dr. Susan Field and Dr. Douglas Dunston are the Connexions editors. Along with the web page, the WRC sponsors events for the women of New Mexico Tech and the city of Socorro.

One of the first events sponsored by the WRC was an opportunity for new female students to meet female members of the faculty at a special luncheon.

Another event featured Robin Marshment, a meteorologist then with KOB-TV in Albuquerque. Marshment gave a lecture entitled, "Up in the Air: How to Have a Career in Science and a Life."

While the WRC is a virtual place for the women of New Mexico Tech to gather and freely exchange ideas and information it is also a place for the women of Socorro. In an effort to reach out to the local community, the WRC sponsored "A Children's Book Fair." The book fair was held at Parkview Elementary School and all the proceeds were donated to El Puente, the Socorro domestic violence shelter.

The WRC will continue to reach out to all women when it plays host to New Mexico Women's Studies Conference 2003. The featured speaker will be photographer, writer, and social activist Margaret Randall. She is the author of We, Coming Up For Air, Sandino's Daughters, and dozens of other books.

Randall was born in New York City in 1936 and moved with her family to Albuquerque when she was 11 years old. She attended the University of New Mexico for one year and then left Albuquerque in 1955 for Europe. Since then she has lived in Spain, been part of the beatnik movement, co-edited a literary magazine in Mexico call El Corno Emplumado, and worked in Nicaragua as an oral historian, photographer, and journalist.

Conference co-coordinator Dr. Susan Field says that the New Mexico Women's Studies Conference is scheduled to run February 28 through March 1, 2003 on the New Mexico Tech campus.

Field, also involved with the WRC, says that a long-term goal is an actual place for the WRC to call home "a place where the women of New Mexico Tech are individuals, a place where women can relax and feel secure." Field wants this to be a place where you're "noticed because you're an individual, not because you're a woman."