Origin of Concept
The Genesis of the Women’s International Study Center
The Women’s International Study Center held its founding ceremony on June 23, 2013 to inspire and enable women to achieve their goals.
While women have made great strides toward equality, they continue to earn less, own less, have fewer educational and economic opportunities. Their accomplishments and contributions are underreported. They are underrepresented in government, STEM careers, and leadership across most industries; women of color endure all of these conditions most acutely. One of the types of fellowships that WISC likes to support is celebrating women’s accomplishments and achievements that have gone unrecognized in the past.
There is a dearth of residential fellowship opportunities for the study of or work by women in the arts, sciences, cultural preservation or business. This reality inspired the WISC founders to create the Fellows-in-Residence program, which provides scholars, artists, authors, and others to have “a room of their own”—residency in a fully furnished house on the Acequia Madre House grounds—to advance their work and engage with our community.
WISC has supported over 60 individual fellows from 7 countries, covering a range of topics and disciplines of local and global interest. Focusing on our core Fellows program, which is unique in its range of participants and supported projects, became a clear path for WISC to pursue in helping women to achieve their goals.
Acequia Madre House
The Women’s International Study Center is lucky to be located on the grounds of the historic Acequia Madre House.
