Towson University will dissolve its women’s and gender studies department next fall, reflecting a drop in student interest in the discipline.

Students will still be able to major and minor in women’s and gender studies, and the university has not eliminated any staff or programming, a spokesperson said. But the administrative change will move it under the interdisciplinary programs umbrella, which houses a number of low-enrollment disciplines.

“I’m upset about it,” said Cindy Gissendanner, the chair of the soon-to-be-dissolved department. “Losing department status, which was something that people fought hard to get, feels like a loss.”

Towson’s women’s studies program is one of the oldest in the country, according to the department’s website; it was established in 1973 and became a formal department in 2002. The program offers a major, a minor and a special LGBTQ Studies minor. Students learn about “the power relations that shape people’s lives” and “the diversity of women’s experiences by exploring the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, class and nation,” the website says.

The number of students majoring in women’s and gender studies at the university has shrunk over the years, according to publicly available data. Interest peaked in 2018, with 38 students majoring in the discipline. It dropped to 18 majors in 2020, then to 11 last fall.

The main changes to the Towson program will be felt by faculty more than students — the women’s and gender studies discipline will no longer have a department chair or carry out administrative tasks that academic departments are expected to.

But another major change, according to Gissendanner, will be funding. The program will likely not be able to fund as much programming and will lose some of its visibility, she said.

There are conflicting reports about enrollment in women’s and gender studies programs nationwide.

According to a 2024 report from the National Women’s Studies Association, there is a growing interest in the discipline due to the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. And a 2024 report by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences stated that more than three-quarters of women’s and gender studies department chairs thought undergraduate enrollment in the program held steady or increased from 2020 to 2023.

But some universities, like Towson, have dissolved the departments and combined women’s and gender studies programs with other, larger units. In recent years, similar changes have occurred at the University of California Santa Cruz, Wichita State University and the University of Iowa.

Towson’s, like some of the programs at the other universities, has an extensive history in women’s and gender studies education.

“We have a reputation of being a pioneer in the field of women’s and gender studies,” Gissendanner said. “We have a proud history and that’s part of what makes this transition from a department to program status, where we started, feel like a defeat.”

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