Transcript of Podcast #32: Womxn’s Center for Success
In Attendance: Aimee Jiang (she/her) & Erika Cortez (she/ella) – Assistant Director
Aimee: Hello, everyone welcome to another episode of the GIC podcast. This series, we’ve been going through some of the resources and departments that we have on campus that graduate students can utilize and so today we have the Womxn’s Center for Success, I think, is your full long name, joining us today. And so we’re excited to have Erika with us. My name is Aimee Jiang. I’m the International Student Support Officer for Graduate Division and I’m going to pass it over to Erika to introduce herself.
Erika: Yes, thank you for having me here. My name is Erika. I use she/ella pronouns, and I’m the Assistant Director for the Women’s Center for Success.
Aimee: Perfect, and the Womxn’s Center is spelled in a way that some of us may not be used to. Can you give us a little bit of history and kind of context to the spelling of your name?
Erika: Yeah, of course. So yeah, I mean, you may have seen that our word women and our name is spelled an X. Really, it was an adoption from the folks who were here previous before us, our founders were the ones who started with Womxn’s Hub, with the X. And we both came together when the director and I started in 2020, and we really had a conversation about like what and why they started creating this Womxn’s Hub, as it previously used to be known. Why, they started it with an X, and we all four of us we all agreed on like why, we were continuing the spelling with an X, and that’s really to showcase that womxn is one of the few lexicon social phenomena like, including the adoption of X and naming gender, nonconforming peopl, gender queer folks, two spirit people, femmes, transgender folks and non-binary people. So it’s the word itself with an X is acknowledging that gender identity exists in a sphere, and really like one word, could have room for multiple gender expressions without weighing, you know, one more important than the other. And so, in addition, we like to also say that you know folks who come into our space and use our services and come to our programs, you know, use our everything in our center, is a person that can relate to each other, that they have been impacted by patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism. Right? So this term we also like to say that it’s acknowledging that it recognizes the past of like the history of feminism. That the history of feminism has definitely included racism, transphobia, and harmful gender binary views. And so like, we always like to acknowledge that and say, our space is, you know, welcoming of all individuals. Our space, our programs, our services as well, we welcome everyone and we include everyone in our space. And we hope that folks in our space also commit to like our community commitments and build a relationship with each other based on our experiences.
Aimee: Yeah, awesome. It’s it’s so great to have a a history of inclusivity like that in this kind of center cause I think there are people who have been harmed by just, you know, linguistics in the way that the world has worked so. I was very excited the first time I heard about the history of your name, and why you guys have continued to utilize that X. So thank you for sharing that. Most people who listen to this podcast are going to be graduate students and what are some of the ways that graduate students can get involved in your center?
Erika: Yes, that is a great question. We get this question very often and I think it’s really because, like a lot of our student interns that work in our center, are undergrads, right? But there are a lot of opportunities that the director and I put into place and kind of, we’re always thinking about new ideas, just cause we as like our previous lives as graduate students, we needed that space as well as grad students. Right? So one thing that always see our student, I guess it’s now we usually have a graduate student who works on these programs. But now they are called our programs assistant. So our programs assistant will be working on graduate programming and then student parent programming. So one of them that is always very popular is our sad grad programs. So we have a program that’s called the Sad Girls Club at UC Irvine, and it includes both undergraduate and graduate students. And we have social programs and emotional wellness programs, both in the Sad Girls Club. And we do specific targeted programs for our sad grads. So meaning just sad graduate students, right? So we do targeted programs for them, usually on the social side. And one of them that has been really popular over the past years has been when we take them to cooking class. So sometimes we partner up with some guest partners on campus, such as the ARC or there’s another cooking location at the Susan school and they both have been such a successful event, because it’s a really like, it’s a good time to socialize and learn how to cook as a graduate student. As we know our graduate students are very busy, last thing we need is to learn how to cook. Right? But other things we have our EmpowerUs Summit (link goes to last year’s summit so you can see what has happened before) that I always like I oversee. So it happens at the beginning of March. It is the, it’s a conference style program and it’s a day long. And it basically kicks off our Womxn’s Month in March and it is for everyone on campus. So undergrads, graduate students, students, or staff and then faculty on campus. So it is a day long conference, and we try to create curriculum, such as like workshops and whatnot to target every single population that are going to be attending this summit. So with my committee that I create, we come up with all of this curriculum and graduate students seem to like, you know, going. We definitely need to get our numbers up by graduate students so I hope that y’all take a look at the you know the agenda beforehand to see if you wanna attend. Other things that we have is our Graduate Student in Residence, that we have every quarter. It’s a quarter long program where graduate students are able to align their campus research with our center and then it will, once they apply to the program which they apply, there’s a link on our website where they can apply it gets sent to our director, and she kind of overlooks of the research that is being on, that is, on the application and she will be approving them case by case. But it’s really to align like the services with our community, and then their research, and usually our graduate and residence, they will do like a presentation for undergraduate students, or like a program to help their research and they’re always very connected to our undergraduate students, and that like as that role model as that like peer role model that can assist them for the future. Cause a lot of our undergrads always have questions about grad school. And I would say, lastly, take a look at our events program calendar, which is on our website and on our campus groups, you’ll be able to RSVP on any program. We really don’t you know, exclude any grade from from any of our programs, so you’re able to go to any program. It’s just some of the programs are dedicated only to graduate students. So there are programs that you know, we choose a curriculum specifically for grad students and we’ll make that aware when you RSVP.
Aimee: Yeah and I think we highlight a lot of the events you guys do in our GPSRC, emails, too. So definitely check both of those places, cause I’ve seen a lot of really fun sounding programs, especially the the Sad Girls Club stuff is always some really fun options there. Are there other ways that students outside of events, is there any one on one support, or are there ways that you get our students connected with other resources? Say, you met someone through an event that maybe needs additional support based on their gender identity. Is there other ways that you would get them connected around campus?
Erika: Yes, of course. So the director, the program coordinator and I, we all take success appointments. The link is on our homepage on our website. But essentially, it takes you to sign up on campus groups and you can have an appointment with us on literally anything. The, the, all three of us have been through grad school. And we have experience with, you know, gender identity exploration. We have a lot of resources and referrals that we can connect you all to. We have really close relationships with at least one person in the departments that you know you may need help in such as, like UCI CARE, our social workers, UCI Basic Needs, Title IX. So we have very close individual people that we specifically like reach out to whenever we need to refer someone out, and then we also love to connect you all with anything that we can help you with. Right? So if that means I don’t know in my personal network, someone that I can connect you with from my graduate network. I can definitely connect you with that. And I believe the director and the pro program coordinator would be available to do that as well.
Aimee: Awesome. And we haven’t, I don’t think talked about this in any of our previous podcasts. But there is a difference between a confidential and a non confidential person on campus. So like, I’m not considered a confidential resource, but UCI CARE is, I would assume you guys are also not considered confidential. Is that correct?
Erika: Yes, that is a great question. Yeah, we are not confidential. We’re known as private and we are mandated reporters on campus as well, and so is our like entire staff who works in our center. But we do get trained in how to respond to certain situations.And then how to respond before having or asking more questions that may lead to something that needs to be more confidential. So all of our students and our staff in our center, we are all trained in that. And I mean, the best thing is that we’re like, we’re trained in being great listeners, right? So we are great listeners. We know what to do when certain situations come up. And the most important piece is that, like we know who to contact and refer out if we need to.
Aimee: Perfect. And I realized I didn’t really specify what confidential means for anyone listening that might not know. That doesn’t mean that if you come into my office or you visit Erika, that you tell us something, and we’re gonna tell all of our coworkers we’re gonna tell your professors and students. It just means there are certain things that are that we’re mandated to report on, if you talk to us about it. I know for me, if a student comes into my office and they just wanna talk about having a hard time transition to UCI. I’m not gonna go tell everyone I know that this student is struggling. But there are certain situations, where I do have to, give information to specific people around campus, and I’ll link mandated reporter so there’s a definition for you in the transcript. But thank you for that. I think that is definitely something important when we’re having one on one conversations about things that happen during grad school. Sometimes those conversations can get personal and things can get brought up that are important to know who you can talk to. Is there anything else you would like our listeners to know about your center? Cause that was the last question I had for you
Erika: Yeah of course. We have a lot of great free services, products, and programs in our space. Right? So if you walk into our center, we like to think of it as like a cozy, welcoming space and that’s really the value and idea that all of our staff has. We want it, we want you all to come and study, to nap, to make friends, to eat, to you know, to live, like live life or live between your classes, maybe in our center. Right? So we have free menstruation products in our center, free STI prevention items, and free testing materials such as like scantrons, pencils, things like that and you can take as many things as you like, right? So like we don’t watch you. We don’t count. We like to say like, take as you need, right? And we, we refill these items very, very constantly. And so we have that, we have a lot of couches up here, we have a lactation space. And the lactation space shares a room with our wellness room. So you can come up and reserve your like the lactation space if you want to lactate, or if you just want to store your milk. And then you can also reserve that same space for wellness. And usually people like to take like their online therapy appointments in there. There, they like to take naps in there. And they like to pray in there. So you are welcome to do any of those items, in our wellness room. And all you have to do is reserve it on our website. We have it on our website. It’ll send you to a link on campus groups, and then you just reserve it. If you need help with anything as well, we have our front desk student, that is always available to answer any questions for you when you come into our space. But other than that, I hope to see you all here in our space. We really enjoy our graduate students with us at all times, and I hope to see you all at our programs.
Aimee: Thank you for joining us, Erika.