Gender and Women’s Studies Certificate

The Graduate Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies is intended to provide students with a coherent, interdisciplinary grounding in current gender and women’s studies scholarship and to create an intellectual community among faculty and graduate students who share scholarly interests in gender and women’s studies. The graduate certificate in women’s studies may be taken to complement a student’s disciplinary program, or it may be taken independent of the pursuit of any disciplinary graduate degree.

For full information on this curriculum, see our Website: https://gws.as.uky.edu/gws-graduate-certificate

Admission Requirements

Admission to the Gender and Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate curriculum requires the following, with all materials submitted online through the Graduate School application.

An undergraduate degree
Admission to the University of Kentucky Graduate School*
A minimum GPA of 3.0 in all undergraduate work
A minimum GPA of 3.0 in any graduate work
A scholarly writing sample
A 500-word personal statement, explaining why the applicant wishes to pursue the Graduate Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies
Official transcripts of all undergraduate and graduate work
Completion of the online certificate application form

*Applicants who are not currently enrolled in a graduate degree program at the University of Kentucky must first secure admission to the Graduate School as post-baccalaureate students. For information on requirements for post-baccalaureate admission to the Graduate School, please contact the Graduate School directly or see the information online. Please send to the Graduate School all and only the materials they require for application. Admission to the Graduate School must, in all cases, precede admission to the Gender and Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate curriculum. Please note that some requirements for the Gender and Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate curriculum exceed minimum requirements of the Graduate School for Post- baccalaureate status. For this reason, as well as others, admission to the Graduate School does not guarantee admission to the Gender and Women’s Studies Program Graduate Certificate curriculum.

The Graduate Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies requires 12 credit hours as follows:

Certificate Requirements

Two elective 3-credit courses, at least one of which is taken outside the student’s most recent home discipline, as defined by undergraduate or graduate concentration, as appropriate (6 credit hours)
GWS 650 - Feminist Theory – preferably taken after the student’s two elective courses
A 3-credit cross-cultural course approved by the Gender and Women’s Studies Department for fulfillment of this requirement. This course should contain a substantial component on culture(s) outside the United States and western Europe.