Dr. Mev Miller

The Written Word

While Dr. Mev Miller had been a professional in the book industry and a volunteer in adult literacy groups for some 20 years, she says that it was a single “aha” moment during her work in a Minneapolis bookstore ignited her quest to transform women’s lives through literacy and adult basic education. She later described that epiphany as an intuitive realization that the knowledge offered in perhaps 80 percent of the books and magazines was inaccessible to those who could most use it: "women who had reached adulthood unable to read for comprehension."”

She subsequently co-founded Women Leading Through Reading, a literacy initiative in the Twin Cities. Then, realizing she also needed a strong academic foundation to support her goals, she entered the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, where she earned her Ed.D. in Critical Pedagogy, focusing on women’s literacy issues, in 2003. It was out of her doctoral dissertation that Dr. Miller conceived and launched WE LEARN (Women Expanding Literacy Education Action Resource Network).

Within her dissertation Dr. Miller eloquently defined the paradox that motivated her:

Women’s words and writings nurture the souls and lives of women who have access to them in print, though women with limited literacy skills generally have little connection to this sustenance in a print-based culture.

She concluded: “Finally, and most importantly, I view reading as an access to information, power and knowledge.”

Now in its sixth year, WE LEARN has grown to a “national organization that addresses the impacts of gender-based differences on women’s learning and how those differences affect women’s ability to achieve success.” It is the sole organization in the United States that focuses directly on adult women’s literacy and basic education issues.

Within its powerful statements of mission, values and vision, WE LEARN works to support “education as a transformative means to create systemic and social change benefiting all women.”

From her home in Rhode Island, and without taking a salary, Dr. Miller oversees WE LEARN and the website litwomen.org, an umbrella site for not-for-profit groups that serve the literature and literacy needs of women.

WE LEARN now includes educators and learners nationwide who take part in its conferences, publications, research, special projects and resource website.

Among the publications is a just-released collection of writings titled “Empowering Women Through Literacy: Views from Experience,” which was edited by Dr. Miller and Dr. Kathy P. King, a professor of Adult Education at Fordham University. The book, published by Information Age (March 2009), presents the literary practices and experiences of 47 educators from around the world.

Drs. King and Miller also edit an annual collection of student writings, including the recently published “Women's Perspectives #4: Transition / Transformation A Journal of Writing by Adult Learners.”

(These and other publications are available through the litwomen.org website.)

Dr. Miller noted that she and her colleagues, the 2,000-plus members of WE LEARN and literacy educators throughout the world have watched as students achieve unimagined success through the simple power of reading. It is estimated, however, that there are more than 1.8 million women in the United States whose lives, from mundane daily tasks to professional dreams, remain ruled by reading and basic education deficiencies.

The mission statement for WE LEARN concludes:

Women’s pursuit of multiple literacies gives visibility to our experiences as women, sustains our ongoing desire to learn, encourages critical thinking, and provides the support and information necessary for reflection, understanding, and action to change our current situations.

So it is that for other women, Dr. Miller continues to “Woman Up!”

Jill Kathryn Ker Conway, Ph.D.

Dr. Jill Kathryn Ker Conway was born Down Under, but she rates a Woman Up, America! place of honor.

Dr. Conway excelled in her undergraduate studies at Sydney University, earning her degree in 1958, although she found that she was often discouraged in school and in later job applications due to long-accepted bias against women. She headed to Europe and then to the United States where she was accepted in the graduate history program at Harvard. Her 1969 doctoral dissertation on “The First Generation of American Women Graduates” launched her reputation as a major voice for women’s issues in America. The widespread attention paid to her study “almost single-handedly rekindled scholarly interest in women’s contributions to Progressive Era America,” according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography,

From her earliest works and college administrative posts, Dr. Conway promoted a steady theme that the intellectual power and unique values of women could and should enrich all sectors – academic, corporate, government, and more – of American life.

Following her marriage to John Conway and positions at the University of Toronto, Dr. Conway was recruited in 1975 to become the first woman president of Smith College, the largest privately endowed college for women in the United States. While at Smith, Dr. Conway is credited for restoring “luster” to the college by increasing the school’s endowment and ensuring faculty excellence. She also remained devoted to teaching and writing, and in 1982 published another landmark study on women, The Female Experience in 18th and 19th Century America.

Part of Dr. Conway’s legacy at Smith and other organizations remains her dedication to develop academic and practical programs for older, working women (the groundbreaking Ada Comstock Scholars program) and welfare recipients. While at Smith, she also successfully lobbied to become the first women’s college to be admitted to the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

She left Smith in 1985, but she has never distanced herself from her influential role in in expanding opportunities for women in schools and the workplace. Within her efforts, she also emphasizes her hope that women “retain an interest in service to society and not to embrace unthinkingly high-earning professions.”

She currently serves as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and continues to write and extend her bibliography of more than 20 books, including The Road from Coorain , the first book in her autobiographical trilogy. The sequels True North and A Woman’s Education completed her memoirs. She also is the co-author with a friend of a series of mystery books written under the name Clare Munnings.