About HERS

Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) located in the Merle C. Chambers Center for the Advancement of Women at the University of Denver, sponsors professional development activities designed to improve the status of women in higher education. Currently the office is engaged in three programs to facilitate the professional development of women in higher education and their advancement into positions of ever-greater responsibility and authority.

The Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, co-sponsored with Bryn Mawr College started in 1976. Each year approximately seventy to seventy-five women administrators and faculty from the United States, Canada, and Africa attend the four-week residential program on the Bryn Mawr College campus. The curriculum prepares participants to work on issues currently facing higher education, with emphasis on the growing diversity of the student body and the work force. Since its inception more than 2000 women administrators from throughout the United States, Canada, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, the Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Sweden, Wales, Iran, and the Netherlands have participated. Alumnae include presidents, vice presidents and deans. In addition to pursuing advancement, participants are asked to shape careers that are personally satisfying and to make a strong and informed contribution to their home institutions.

The HERS, New England Management Institute for Women in Higher Education started in 1978 and offers women administrators and faculty professional management training. The Management Institute is an integrated series of five weekend seminars conducted October through April at Wellesley College. Some 1,200 women, primarily from the five New England states, have participated. Each year approximately fifty women participate in a course of study similar in focus and intent to that of the Summer Institute but shorter in duration and less broad in its coverage.
The website can be found at: http://www.wellesley.edu/WCW/Hers/Frm_Home.htm.

The HERS SOUTH AFRICA PROGRAM, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was completed in 2003. Over the course of four years, 73 South African women traveled to the United States to participate in carefully tailored training opportunities and to observe administrative practice at U.S. colleges and universities included Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, And Bridgewater State Colleges and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Curricular focus was on strategic planning, change leadership, human resources development and institutional effectiveness. Continuing activities are being conducted by the HERS-South Africa office in Cape Town, including one-day and two-day workshops and week-long HERS-South Africa Academy serving women in South Africa, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The website is: http://www.hers-sa.org.za/

Throughout the year the HERS office works with various colleges, universities, and higher education-related bodies providing consulting, training, and presentations on appropriate subjects. The Executive Director, Dr. Judith S. White, serves on various education-related boards and commissions. Dr. White directs the Summer Institute and the Management Institute and the HERS Network: HERS at the University of Denver and HERS, New England at Wellesley College.

Dr. Cynthia Secor, now Senior Research Associate, is the founding Director of HERS and of the Summer Institute. She became Director of the Management Institute in 1984 and is a founder of the NACWAA/HERS Institute for Administrative Advancement offering women coaches and athletic administrators intensive training in athletic administration.
NACWAA can be found at: http://www.nacwaa.org

HERS has been housed at the University of Denver since 1983. The university provides space and services. Dr. Secor and Dr. White and the staff of HERS participate actively in university life. In 2004 HERS moved into the Merle C. Chambers Center for the Advancement of women. The Chambers Center is a new building on the University of Denver campus that that also houses The Women's College at the University of Denver and the Women's Foundation of Colorado. These three organizations share a common goal — that women and girls receive educational opportunities equal to those open to men and that they subsequently participate fully in the work force.
For more information visit the Chambers Center website at: http://womenscollege.du.edu/chamberscenter/index.html