The article is the first in a three-part series about women’s roles at Covenant College throughout its history. This first article is an overview of the history of women at Covenant, specifically the faculty, starting in 1957. The next two articles will look at the years 2018-present, explaining the findings and impacts of the 2018 G.R.A.C.E. report, and the College’s failed attempts to secure a place for women on the Board of Trustees.
Looking through the old editions of the Tartan in the Covenant archives, one can see the growth of Covenant College. The first yearbook was published in 1957. The student body was tiny. Back when Covenant Seminary and Covenant College were both functioning on the same campus in St. Louis, and under the same administration, the total number of students was 52—37 men and 15 women. Twelve of the faculty members were men. Four of the faculty were women, including Marian Jane Downey, professor of English; Eula McCain, assistant professor of music; Ida H. McCain, associate professor of foreign languages; and Verna F. Lair, instructor in mathematics. Considering that the college was instituted in the late ‘50s, and its small size, there seems to be a balanced gender ratio for both the faculty and the students.
The 1986 yearbook, however, is a different story. The only female faculty member left was Susan Gallagher, an English professor. What happened? In 1960, there were a total of 19 faculty members, four of whom were women. In 1970, there were 29 faculty members, five of whom were women. In 1980, there were 38 faculty members, five of whom were women. As the college grew, the number of female professors remained the same.
In 1987, Susan Gallagher, the last remaining female professor, left the college for a job at Calvin College, and was replaced by Cliff Foreman. “I took a vow that I would never grow a beard, at least,” he said, recalling his early years at Covenant.
Despite the lack of female role models, Gwen Macallister still felt nurtured as a student: “I felt very encouraged by the professors who were in the English department in terms of my potential to go on to grad school and my potential to be a professor. I felt very supported and very affirmed.” Around the same time, there was an initiative to hire more female professors in response to the decline of female faculty members. A couple of departments around campus, including the English department, created a program selecting female majors of their field for a scholarship which would pay for their graduate education, if they showed interest in returning to Covenant to teach. One of Macallister’s classmates got selected for the scholarship, but didn’t come back to Covenant to teach.
By the ‘90s, the school succeeded in hiring two more female faculty members, Rebecca Dodson and Pat Ralston. And in 1996, Ralston and Dodson were joined by Dr. Daphne Haddad, professor of Education.
Haddad described a moment during the hiring process when she was asked to present a lecture to a class: “I talked about diversity in schools, which is what I was writing my dissertation on. And when I finished, I said, ‘Are there any questions?’ And the first question, I think the only question, was from a male student, and he asked, ‘Do you think it’s appropriate for you as a woman to be teaching men?’ Exactly those words. And of course then my response was, since there were administrators and others sitting in the back of the room, I said ‘The men at the back of the room obviously think so, or they wouldn’t have invited me.’”
Haddad quickly understood she was a minority her first year at Covenant. Her first semester teaching at Covenant, a female student stopped to talk to her in the hallway and said, “Dr. Haddad, I wanted to meet you. When I heard you had been hired I thought you were just a token. But they say you’re quite good.”
By the time of Dr. Haddad's arrival, questions surrounding women’s roles at home and in the church were already being actively debated, and those debates were reaching Covenant. Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, author of “Gender and Grace,” came and spoke in chapel from February 13-15 in 1991, as a part of the Staley lecture series. Katrina Belz, a student at the time, wrote a review of the lecture series in the Bagpipe in the March 1 publication of that year.
Belz noted that Van Leeuwen emphasized the importance of the family of God and claimed that traditional family roles were a source of idolatry for the church. “For the Christian, the kingdom is the first family,” Van Leeuwen said. Foreman remembers significant backlash to the lecture series, saying the board was “concerned.” In Belz’s article, President Brock was quoted, saying that Van Leeuwen “never seriously looked at what the scripture had to say,” and that “[spouses having] absolutely equal roles in the home” was “ridiculous.” No immediate action was taken by the board, except for talking to the faculty. “I talked to a board member who put strictures on what I could say to students and couldn’t in regard to the role of women in the church,” Foreman said.
There were also positive reactions to Van Leeuwen’s conference. A student at the time, Elissa Pusser said that Van Leeuwen “gave her thoughts a voice,” and that she was interested in researching women’s roles in the church and home more.
Van Leeuwen’s arrival had some long-term impacts. Three years later, an article written by Joe Kickasola for World magazine called into question the way the college had handled questions surrounding diversity. Commissioned by Marvin Olasky, Kickasola wrote an article about issues that female and African American members of Covenant’s community faced. The title of the story was Great Ideas of (Hu)mankind, and the caption read: “At Covenant College, the great debate over political correctness is underway.” Kickasolo wrote: “Leeuwen specifically challenged the image of the husband being the ‘head of the home.’” Kickasola pointed out in his article, that, as a result of ongoing gender debate in subsequent years, the women’s sports teams were able, for the first time, to receive equal support and funding from the administration as the men’s teams at Covenant.
By the 1995-1996 school year, things were tense at the college. As political and cultural tensions rose, the college leaders were anxious to align themselves with conservative values. At a semi-annual board meeting that was held from October 26-27 in 1995, the board asked the faculty to write a Statement of Affirmation, an addition to the Statement of Community Beliefs, that covered issues such as abortion; homosexuality; radical feminism; and the origins of creation. After it was written, staff and faculty members were expected to declare their agreement with the Statement of Affirmation, (or admit which parts they disagreed within) as well as the Westminster Standards, which before had been the only base criterion through which the faculty and staff had been hired and vetted.
Although the faculty raised some concerns, they assented to writing the statement. The resulting document established an official, firmly complementarian position the college’s faculty were expected to uphold, if not personally, in the classroom.
Between the ‘90s and the 2000s, there was overall very little faculty growth (both male and female). In 2000, there were 39 faculty members, four of whom were female. Dr. Macallister was hired in 2002. She remembers that with very few female faculty members and even fewer who were in the same stage of life as her, it was challenging building relationships. She was the first female faculty member that became pregnant during her tenure, and so a maternity leave policy was created.
After that, the additions of new female faculty members began snowballing. By 2010, there were 43 male faculty and 12 female faculty members. In 2020, there were 50 male faculty and a little less than 20 female faculty. Foreman commented: “Over the course of my career here, the number of female faculty have grown and continue to grow … it got better.” Macallister remarks that the female faculty have increased, as well as the number of female faculty who currently have children. “This year, Kat Wieldraayer, who works in the chapel office, initiated a working mom’s lunch. We met a couple times in the fall. The first time I was able to go … we all kind of went around the room and said how many kids we have, and honestly, I got emotional. It was really moving to me thinking about when I started and feeling alone in my particular situation and just to see all these women here who are moms and doing their job. I was really pleased, grateful and encouraged by that.”
When Dr. Elissa Yokkiko Weichbrodt was a student, there weren’t many female faculty: “When I came back to teach at Covenant, welcoming me back here as faculty, women who were single, women who were mothers, who had grown children, seeing that diversity of experiences being represented on the faculty was super exciting for me. Female faculty still get giddy during our faculty conference … when there’s a line for the bathroom, because that didn’t used to be the case for them.”
Despite the growing number of female faculty and support for their work, however, all was not entirely well. Every three years, the college runs a survey called “Great Colleges to Work For,” created by the organization The Chronicle of Higher Education. The survey records and collects data in accordance with faculty and staff satisfaction. In 2017, The Chronicle survey was conducted again and showed overall high-levels of satisfaction from the faculty, earning the college a high ranking on The Chronicle's list.
When Dr. Karen Nelson, the Vice President of Institutional Effectiveness, however, analyzed the data further, she noticed a clear disparity of satisfaction between male and female staff and faculty. Something was not right for these members of Covenant’s Community. Dr. Nelson brought the information to the Cabinet, the Cabinet decided to contact the organization G.R.A.C.E (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) and ask for an examination, hoping to find the root of the issue.