About the Students

WOST J111 enrolled students from the Columbia, Beaufort, Lancaster, Salkahatchie, and Union campuses—and only students on the Columbia campus had any other access to women’s studies courses that semester.  The demand for the course was significant enough that I increased the enrollment from 20 to 30 in order to reach more students on the various regional campuses—more than half of those students came from those campuses.

The students ranged widely in their ages and backgrounds.  Of the 29 students who persisted in the course, their ages ranged from 19 to 47, with an average age of 25.6 years old.  Some were full-time traditional students, and other were taking just one or two classes while working full-time and raising families.  Of the students in the class who reported their race, 64% were white, and 36% were African-American; by comparison, only 15.4% of the USC student body were African American.  The one area in which the course lacked diversity was in the number of male students; only 2 of 29 were male, and both were traditional-age college students on the Columbia campus.  Otherwise, enrollments were uniquely diverse, with a wide range of students able to share their learning and their experiences.