From the Boarding House to the Board Room: 250 Years of Women at Rutgers

"From the Boarding House to the Board Room: 250 Years at Rutgers", directed by filmmaker June Cross and produced by the Institute for Women's Leadership Consortium, highlights the multiple layers of Rutgers' ongoing transformation. The film was commissioned as part of Rutgers University 250th anniversary celabration.

Trailer

Rutgers was founded in 1766 to educate young men, and so it remained for the first 152 years. Yet from the beginning women played vital but unrecognized roles. While Rutgers’ story is distinctive, it is also universal.

The film considers the radical transformation of higher education and how this revolution continues to meet the needs of 21st century students.

Documentary Film

“From the Boarding House to the Board Room: 250 Years of Women at Rutgers”, directed by filmmaker June Cross and produced by the Institute for Women’s Leadership Consortium, highlights the multiple layers of Rutgers' ongoing transformation.

The film was commissioned as part of Rutgers University 250th anniversary celebration.

Panel

The film premiered in October, 2016 and was followed by a conversation with Director and 2016 Laurie Chair June Cross; Mary Hawkesworth, Distinguished Professor of Political Science & Women’s and Gender Studies; Kayo Denda, Head, Margery Somers Foster Center & Women's Studies Librarian; Mary Ellen Clark, Douglass College '77, Executive Director, New York City Employment and Training Coalition; and Prerana Narahari, Rutgers University '17, IWL Leadership Scholar.

Women's Education and Leadership Digital Collection

The above videos are part of the Women’s Education and Leadership Digital Collection at Rutgers. The project is a continuation of the work started by the documentary film “From the Boarding House to the Boardroom: 250 Years of Women at Rutgers”. In collaboration with the Margery Somers Foster Center and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the IWL strives to preserve and curate the materials collected as part of this documentary project, developing a digital platform accessible to the public.

The IWL is currently editing thirty short teasers and longer archived versions of the interviews from the original documentary project and hopes to expand to this collection, capturing the transformative contributions of women at Rutgers University and sharing their leadership stories with future generations of students and scholars.

To learn more about the history of women’s education and leadership at Rutgers, visit our legacy page.

Contact

Institute for Women’s Leadership
162 Ryders Lane
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8555
P: 848.932.1463