For over fifteen years, the Margaret Sloss Women’s Center has been a place for Iowa State students to go when they need support with discrimination, abuse or harassment, or just need a place to hang out with friends.

National Women’s Week, a program running this week by the women’s center, has been in existence at Iowa State since 1973, eight years before the center was founded.

The Sloss Women’s Center was formed in 1980 after the recommendation of the university committee on women to provide for the students what the YWCA did not have the university funding to provide.

The YWCA, which has been on the ISU campus for nearly 100 years, works closely with the women’s center. Both organizations produce programs to help women survive in today’s world.

Judy Dolphin, executive director at the YWCA, said, “The establishment of the women’s center made the university make a definite commitment to improving the status of women on campus.

“The women’s center really was focusing on academic and career empowerment, and the YWCA was focusing on women’s empowerment, issues of safety and issues of sexuality,” Dolphin said.

The center was named after Margaret Sloss, the first woman to be admitted to and graduate from ISU’s Veterinary school.

The Sloss House, located south of Curtiss Hall, was originally constructed in 1883 as the housing for Professor Charles E. Bessey. The women’s center was established on the first floor in 1980, sharing the building with the Committee on Lectures. The center has occupied the building entirely since 1986.

In literature written by the center’s director, Celia E. Naylor-Ojurongbe, the center’s purpose is “…to provide Iowa with a model for coordinated programs of special interest to women and to contribute to the integration of women into the economic, educational, socio/cultural and political life of the state in a meaningful and productive way…”