Karen Andres

Current Employment: As of December 1, 2009 - Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC.

It is both an honor and a privilege to be the first doctoral graduate from Women's Studies at the University of Regina. Women's Studies was not an area I was familiar with prior to beginning my studies. My background is in physical education, nursing and health promotion. What I am most grateful for is how through my courses, with the assistance of my faculty, my perspective of my world has shifted. I am very passionate about challenging the 'taken for granted' within my world as a woman, as a nurse, as a member of the greater society. My understanding of gender and its impact on our social context are deeply shifted. The value and impact of courses in Women's Studies is hard to predict in foresight – but is easily understood in hindsight. One of the goals of higher education is about the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Through the courses in women's studies, any student can enrich their understanding of their social world and will likely be challenged to view the world differently afterwards. As an example of the impact of my course work on my own profession, as I teach in nursing, I constantly challenge my students to understand their assumptions, what is being taken for granted and challenge them to conceive of how the topic of discussion could be viewed by multiple viewpoints.