“Developing A Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice (SRHRJ) certificate”
by Sam Bialecki
Throughout the semester, I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Katherine Johnson from the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Tulane. We have been working on the development of a Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice (SRHRJ) certificate for students to attach to their degrees. We started out by researching universities with a similar certificate or something related. What we discovered was the Five Colleges Consortium and their certificate on the very thing we were looking for. We discovered their classes, goals, and disciplines. From there, we were able to examine what we had here at Tulane. We were able to compile a list of about twenty-three potential courses to be included in the certificate.
Next, we reached out to the professors of these courses and compiled their syllabi. We reviewed each syllabus carefully and brought the list down. These potential courses will hopefully include the topics of reproductive health, reproductive rights, the politics of reproduction, the history of reproduction in the US, and reproduction in various communities around the world. These courses will cross disciplines from history, public health, sociology, and gender and sexuality studies.
After reviewing courses, we are now working on compiling student interest. This is an important measurement when it comes to the development of a new certificate because we want to know how relevant this certificate is and how interested is the student population in it. Basically, we are looking to see who actually wants this certificate to exist. Of course, it most definitely is relevant and worth it, and we expect this to be reflected in our student interest survey. Some of the questions will ask about student interest and some of the questions ask about student involvement currently in SRHRJ. We are getting ready to send out our student interest survey at the beginning of next year and hope that this will help us move one step closer to making this certificate a reality. We hope to have a final draft of the certificate proposal by the end of next semester and from there we can only have the highest of hopes. I have absolutely loved this experience so far working with Dr. Johnson and cannot wait to continue our journey in hopes of making reproductive health a permanent part of our education.