New Women’s Affairs dean broadens sexual-assault education program

As part of an initiative to reevaluate programs within the Office for Women’s Affairs, newly named Dean Yvette Alex-Assensoh has decided to broaden the focus of the sexual assault education program RAISE, prompting the resignation of the program’s coordinator.
“(The Dean) made it pretty clear to me that RAISE would not exist as a stand-alone program next year,” said Kristen Jozkowski, former RAISE coordinator.
Since assuming her duties, Alex-Assensoh said she has become familiar with OWA’s mission – which includes facilitating gender equity, empowerment and personal safety for faculty. As part of the OWA mission, RAISE addresses the issues of sexual-assault prevention.
In an e-mail interview, Alex-Assensoh said the decision to broaden OWA’s outreach efforts is based on the expressed needs and desires for programming that “addresses a larger subset of issues.”
“OWA does not have the resources to allow a single staff person – who is employed and paid with University funds – the luxury of focusing only on one issue,” she said. “Therefore, our efforts to broaden and re-evaluate all of OWA programming is, as well, motivated by a desire to ensure that everything we do at OWA is safe for our participants and our target audiences, non-offensive and, indeed, that it is within proper legal boundaries as well as IU policy norms, and that it makes the best use of OWA’s limited staff and financial resources.”
Jozkowski, a Ph.D. student at IU, said when she discussed the future of RAISE with Alex-Assensoh, the focus of the program was to be broadened and would cover a number of college topics and that sexual assault might be a small component of it.
After discussing the future of the program, Jozkowski said the direction it was headed was not where her interests were.
“It didn’t seem to fall in line with my professional development,” she said.
Jozkowski also works at the IU Health Center and said the ideas Alex-Assensoh wanted to present to RAISE are already encompassed in her work at the health center.
“It didn’t make sense to stay,” she said. “I wouldn’t be focusing on sexual-assault education.”
Jozkowski praised the program and the improvements it made within the past year to gain a following on campus. Despite the extra motivation, the dean decided to broaden most programs within OWA.
Alex-Assensoh said the office is still in the process of fine-tuning the final details of the program. She said OWA will outline the new program once a new coordinator is named.
Jozkowski said if the dean is going to continue with the RAISE programming, she will be disappointed, stating that the dean made it clear there would be no programming.
“We’re the only group on campus that does any sexual-assault education,” she said. “We did more programming (this year) than what had been done in the last seven years. ... People seemed really excited about it. A lot of people contacted me who were really pumped and excited to do RAISE in the fall.”