About Us

ROSE CORRIGAN 

Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Drexel University

 

Work and Volunteer Experience

I have been a service provider working on sexual and domestic violence for over fifteen years. While in college I began volunteering at Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) in Philadelphia, providing crisis intervention services on the hotline and emergency room. Two years later I joined the staff at WOAR managing the volunteer training program and providing crisis services to victims. I left WOAR in 1995 to attend graduate school in New Jersey; while there I volunteered at Somerset Rape Crisis Services on the crisis hotline and also led their forty-hour advocate training.

When I moved back to Philadelphia in 1997 I worked for several years as a part-time shelter staffperson at the Domestic Abuse Project in Media, PA. During this time I also volunteered at the Philadelphia Women’s Medical Fund, a local agency which provides financial assistance to women who are unable to afford the cost of a safe, legal abortion. I joined the staff of the Fund as administrative coordinator in 1998, and worked there until 2001, serving as interim executive director for several months before my departure to teach full-time.

 

Academic Positions

In 1995 I left full-time DV/SA work to pursue a Ph.D. in political science at Rutger’s University-New Brunswick. My work focused on public law and women & politics; I completed my degree in 2004. My dissertation focused on implementation of “Megan’s Law” (the state’s sex offender registration and notification statute) in New Jersey, and drew heavily on my own experiences working in the field. Because of my belief that rape care programs had important and interesting things to say about law and policy on sexual violence, my dissertation relied heavily on interviews with local sexual assault advocates. That project was the seed of this larger examination.

I began my first full-time faculty position at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in August 2003. I taught at John Jay for two years before I was awarded an American Association of University Women post-doctoral fellowship to begin research for this project. (Please note that the AAUW’s generous support for my work should not be taken as an endorsement of its analysis or conclusions.) I took a year off from teaching to travel and conduct interview with advocates in several states. In 2006, while on leave, I accepted a new position at Drexel University in my hometown of Philadelphia.

I have been at Drexel for the last two years, and in 2007 was named Director of Women’s Studies. I teach undergraduate courses on constitutional law, and have also taught for Drexel’s Earle Mack School of Law. In Fall 2008 I will be on leave to finish my interviews with local advocates in Colorado, Kansas, and South Carolina.

It is my hope that some of this research will be of interest and assistance to the violence against women community, which has played such an important role in my own life.

 

 

 

 

The Women’s Studies program is an interdisciplinary program within the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs (CIP) in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University.

For more information regarding this program or CIP please contact Kate Hughes at khughes@drexel.edu.