In the Spring of 1991, Robert McDermott, then newly appointed president of the Institute, invited me to create a Women's Program. I was aware of the robust and growing Women's Spirituality Movement in the United States and Western Europe and that it was not recognized as a legitimate topic for study in either the Women's Studies Programs or the Women and Religion courses offered by the academic establishment. I felt there was a need for an interdisciplinary graduate program that would explore the varied aspects of women's spirituality which I defined broadly as including women's experience of the sacred, our bodies, and sexuality; ways of knowing; psychological development; moral reasoning: and ethics. My conception was of a Women's Spirituality Program that would be innovative not only in its course of study but also in its pedagogy, encouraging non-hierarchical, collaborative learning, critical thinking, and social activism.

I saw CIIS as a non-traditional institution that honored the spiritual dimension of experience and was committed to the integration of body, mind, and spirit as an ideal setting for such a program. Its diverse faculty and programs were potentially productive resources for an interdisciplinary course of study that would draw from philosophy and religion, psychology, anthropology, somatics, and the School of Transformative Learning with its innovative pedagogy, and would, in turn, contribute a critically important expanded awareness of gender issues. It is heartening to witness the fruits of this ongoing endeavor.