Joan Straumanis

The Registry for Retired College and University presidents connected Straumanis to a one-year contract as president of the Metropolitan College of New York (academic year 2007–2008). Straumanis reversed impending plans for sale of the college to a for-profit institution, recommitted the college to its founding vision of service work combined with academics, and rebuilt enrollment as well as the administration and the board of trustees. Her "savvy, down-to-earth leadership style brought the college back from the brink."

During her two and a half-year contract as president of Antioch College (2002–2004), Straumanis rebuilt community trust with the staff unions, completing the first contract revision negotiation in thirty years. She oversaw a Renewal Commission, chartered by the board of trustees, and the Committee of 150, a broad volunteer effort by top professionals in higher education in honor of the college's sesquicentennial year. She brought in Antioch as a founding member of the Eco League multi-college environmental consortium of "green" colleges. During her presidency, she also launched a capital campaign and helped initiate curricular reform and budget stabilization plans.

At the National Academy of Engineering Straumanis also played an independent advisory role on matters involving engineering and technology from 2000 to 2002.

Straumanis served as a program director at two U.S. Federal agencies in offices devoted to supporting higher education. In the Department of Education she worked from 1992 to 1995 and 1998 to 2002 at the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). At the National Science Foundation from 2008 to 2010 she managed basic research on neuroscience and learning at the Research Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). In her SBE work, she guided innovative projects developing culturally grounded learning models for Native American Communities, as well as other work on Native American partnerships.

Her 1992 FIPSE guide, "Funding Your Best Ideas: A 12 Step Program," became a standard grant-seeker reference used in many institutions. It is still in use well beyond her employment at the Department of Education.

In a 1986 Interview at Rollins College, Straumanis explained her commitment to a broad definition of women's studies:

In a 1984 retrospective interview after leaving Denison, Straumanis highlighted what was most remarkable, in her view, about the program:

Each semester's women's studies course would end in a party with a parody responding to a common accusation "of having a one-sided course—that we never gave the other side." Straumanis reminisced in 1984 about those parody final classes in the 1970s:

As a feminist and education innovator, Straumanis brought some controversial ideas when she moved to Kenyon College as associate provost. Most important was the concept that women's studies should be taught as part of a liberal arts education, and within her first year (1983–1984) she had recruited a team to create a class.

Straumanis was awarded the inaugural (first annual) Faculty Leadership Award, Crossed Keys Honorary in 1981 at Denison University. She was instrumental in the founding of the Great Lakes Colleges Association's Women's Studies Consortium and the Society for Women in Philosophy.

Immediately after graduate school, Straumanis was hired as a philosopher by Denison University, a liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. Her early leadership in establishing women's studies as a discipline required a thorough shake-up of the dominant paradigm at the university. Her activism was not without consequence. In 1975 Denison denied Straumanis and three other female faculty members tenure. One stated reason for the denial was her involvement in women's studies. An uprising by the growing women's movement at Denison forced the institution to reconsider and grant Straumanis tenure. Later, while chair of the Philosophy Department, Straumanis also served on the search committee which in 1976 hired Dr. Robert C. Good, who had been the first U.S. ambassador to Zambia, as president of Denison.

Students from Straumanis's 1974 Legal Rights of Women course examined rape law in Ohio after a rape on the Denison University campus. Straumanis was herself arrested (but never prosecuted) for failure to report a felony. Her announcement to the community of the fact that a rape had occurred precipitated this arrest, after she had been approached confidentially by the student who was raped. The students, continuing the effort long after class had ended, proposed legislation to decriminalize confidentiality maintained by de facto counselors such as professors and advisors. In 1976, the legislation covering sexual assault and rape counseling, even by nonprofessional counselors, was signed into Ohio law.

The program grew into a collaboration with many other faculty including Nan Nowik, John Schilb, Robin Bartlett and Julie Mullroy. The program was immediately popular, starting its second semester with 120 students, eleven of them men. In 1973, it was not possible to get a graduate degree in women's studies, so the faculty resisted requests to approve formal classes. Rather than create a normal, graded credit course, they undertook a pass/fail interdisciplinary seminar without grades and incorporating student leadership. This allowed for curricular freedom without encroaching on any department's turf.

In 1972, Straumanis co-created a women's studies program at Denison University with feminist organizer Ann Fitzgerald and student Peggy Gifford. It was the earliest women's studies program offered at a private college and followed closely on the heels of the trail-blazing programs at UCSD and SUNY Buffalo, both in 1971.

Straumanis is a graduate of Bronx High School of Science (1953) and of Antioch College (1957). After attaining the equivalent of a master's degree in mathematics based on graduate studies at the University of Colorado and Ohio State University, she completed a PhD in the philosophy department at the University of Maryland (1971).

Joan Straumanis (/strəˈmɑːnɪs/ born 1937) is an academic administrator, philosopher, second-wave feminist, mathematician, civil libertarian, public speaker, and American pioneer in women's studies. She co-created the first women's studies program outside a public university, and served as president of both Antioch College and the Metropolitan College of New York and as academic dean at other institutions.