The Times They Are A (Positively) Changin’

If you aren’t familiar with James Madison University or it’s business school, let me preface this post with a little backstory.

JMU is known for a great many things, and one of which is our Business School. Consistently ranked among the top 15 in the nation, the CPA program was ranked #1 by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy last year. Unfortunately the school is also known to house debilitating gender bias.

Often overlooked, the college is still very much a boy club; women hold less than 1/4 of its staff positions. What are worse are the resurfacing rumors of sexual discrimination and bias towards female students within the programs from members of the faculty. As the title suggests, the times are changing as the business school welcomes its first female dean, Mary Gowan.

Gowan has been involved with higher education for over thirty years, and has been a dean at schools including Elon and George Washington University. What makes her monumental is her stance on preparing women for the workforce and giving them the tools they need to succeed.

In an exclusive interview with our school’s newspaper, The Breeze, Gowan talked about her goals for the college and specifically what she hopes to do for women within the school:

I have a renewed commitment to fostering programs that support women to develop communication skills, assertiveness, negotiation — all those kinds of skills that you need to navigate the world, because there’s still a lot of bias against women… My desire is to find ways to facilitate women being more confident stepping up to the plate, if that’s what they want to do so they can be successful. Because then, they can’t ignore us.

Click here to read the complete interview.

Tell us what you think! Have you ever experienced sexual discrimination or bias at school or in the workforce? What would be your advice to the dean, or what would you like to see done in the school?