Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release						April 23, 1997

Role, History of Women's Education Examined in Lawrence University Symposium


	APPLETON, WIS.  When Lawrence University opened its doors in 1849, 
it counted 13 women among its first class of students, making it one of the
first co-educational institutions in the country.  In 1964, Lawrence's 
commitment to women's education was reaffirmed by its consolidation with 
Milwaukee-Downer College, an all-women's institution.	

	In conjunction with Lawrence's year-long sesquicentennial celebration,
the tradition of educating women, both at Lawrence and nationally, will be
celebrated Saturday, May 3 in a special gender studies symposium, "Women's
Education and Coeducation."  Beginning at 1 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center
auditorium, the all-afternoon event is free and open to the public.

	Lawrence President Richard Warch will participate in a three-member
panel discussion that will open the symposium, providing an overview of the
history and importance of coeducation at Lawrence.  

	Joining Warch on the panel will be Lynne Kleinman, senior research
analyst at Alverno College and lecturer in the department of history and center
for women's studies at UW-Milwaukee, and Genevieve McBride, associate professor
of mass communication at UW-Milwaukee, who also teaches women's studies. 

	A historian, Kleinman will examine the motivations behind the
educational process at Milwaukee-Downer College, focusing on the apparent
discrepancies between them and the prevailing ideology about what the proper
goals of higher education for women should be.

	McBride, an award-winning author, will examine women's education in
Wisconsin during the 19th and early 20th centuries and discuss how Wisconsin's
education model fit into the national context of that time.  Her 1993 book, "On
Wisconsin Women: Working for Their Rights From Settlement to Suffrage,"
received the Book of Merit Award from the state historical society and the
Council for Wisconsin Writers Award for scholarly non-fiction.		   

 	Following the panel discussion, Benjamin Filene, curator of the
Outagamie Historical Society, will deliver a slide presentation/lecture
focusing on the Outagamie Museum's latest exhibition, "Each and All:  Lawrence
University and the Coeducation Experiment," which uses Lawrence as a case study
on how and whether men and women should be educated together.  The "Each and
All" exhibition opens Friday, May 2 and runs through June, 1998. 

	The final segment of the symposium features a panel of members of
Downer Feminist Council, a student organization concerned with gender issues,
who will share their views on the current state of women's education at
Lawrence.  A reception will conclude the day's activities.

	"This symposium is really a celebration of Lawrence's two-fold
inheritance," said Edmund Kern, assistant professor of history at Lawrence and
one of the symposium's coordinators.  "Coeducation is taken for granted today,
but Lawrence was very cutting edge when it was founded.  All-women institutions
were the primary way women were educated well into the 20th century.  We want
to explore how both of these traditions are an important part of Lawrence's
identity today." 	         

	Since 1960, the number of women's colleges operating in the United
States has dropped from 300 to just 84 today.