Karen Stein gives URI students, from left, Alexandra Rioles, Jennifer Daley, Renee Ether and Christen Makran, something to think about. “They can be anything they want,” says Stein, “from aviators to zoologists.”

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

SOUTH KINGSTOWN While growing up in early-1950s Brooklyn, Karen F. Stein would read the essays her mother, an elementary school teacher, brought home written by her students.

Writing about what they wanted to be when they grew up, the boys looked to their future as “doctors, lawyers and cowboys,” Stein recalls. But the girls, she discovered, wrote more about home life, and less about careers.

“I knew something was wrong here. The guys were looking towards all the interesting jobs. I don’t know exactly how old I was, but it left a big impression on me.”

So big that Stein grew up to become something of a female explorer, forging through uncharted territory at the University of Rhode Island, where she helped create the Women’s Studies Program, one of the first in the nation, and rose to become its director.

Tonight, at a sold-out dinner, the Kingston resident will be among three Rhode Island residents named Women of the Year by the Rhode Island Commission on Women.

The other award winners are Lynn T. Antonelli of Cranston, an engineer with the Navy and a world leader in the area of laser-based sensors technology; and Sister Mary Reilly of Bristol, founder and executive director of Providence’s Sophia Academy and a founding member of McAuley House and Dorcas Place.

The award has been presented yearly since 1989, noted Shanna Wells, the commission’s director. This year, 17 nominations were submitted.

Stein was named Women of the Year in 1993 by URI’s Association of Professional and Academic Women. She spent many years on committees to improve working conditions for part-time faculty — mostly women — and helped develop a new parental leave policy.

“I was working within the channels,” Stein said, seeking better benefits for part-time faculty and staff, all of them women. “We wanted to get into the union. We had to keep working on it.

“It was more of a negotiation than a fight.”

STEIN BEGAN as a part-time lecturer herself, having arrived at the university in the late 1960s as many women did, following a husband’s job.

With two young daughters to raise, an undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College and a master’s from Penn State, Stein introduced herself at the Kingston campus by way of the English Department. Women writers were noticeably absent from the curriculum, she recalls — “kind of invisible.”

And women, it seemed, were just as invisible in other academic disciplines.

In 1972 a course was introduced that focused on women in English, art, music, psychology, history. It attracted 200 students and laid the groundwork for today’s Women’s Studies Department. Stein was among the campus women to clear the way and set the stage for a major then seen in only a handful of American colleges.

In the nomination papers for the Women of the Year, it was noted:

“Before Karen helped start and formalize the Women’s Studies Program at URI, people could go through four years of college without knowing about women scientists, politicians, artists, historians, reformers, writers, and so on. She developed the high caliber of the Women’s Studies faculty and courses to guarantee that Women’s Studies would make women visible, and give young women and men tools of analysis to understand what’s happening in their personal lives and in the world around them. Women’s Studies has blossomed into a program with 14 graduating seniors this year, several Presidential Award winners in other departments, and increasing numbers of majors and minors.”

But Stein says, “I’m sort of the representative of the group. I just happened to be the person here.”

“Karen is a modest, quiet person who accomplishes a great deal without patting herself on the back,” replies Winifred E. Brownell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1972, Brownell was one of the original group of professors to team-teach the first women’s studies courses on campus. Before long, she says, other colleges were looking to URI’s program as a model.

“Karen was a key force and was one of the leaders to put the courses together,” Brownell says.

THE WOMEN’S Studies Program, says Stein, has become “a lifeline for people in other departments” when dealing with various issues, such as inclusion of female authors, scientists and athletes.

“If there are English courses that don’t have women writers, there had better be a pretty good reason,” she says.

Stein also went on to serve, Brownell pointed out, as English Department chairwoman.

Stein has also served on the executive board of the American Association of University Professors, the URI faculty union, and in addition to having a long list of academic accomplishments, has also managed to volunteer at the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge, the Kingston Free Library board, and the Narragansett Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

A women’s consciousness-raising group she helped organize in 1970 “still meets. We still have a lot of things to talk about and share,” she says, suspecting that the group may just be one of the “longest-lasting consciousness-raising groups in the country.”

Wakefield’s Hera Gallery, one of the nation’s first women’s cooperative art galleries, is an offshoot of that group, Stein said.

Stein’s work isn’t over, she says, telling of a student who came to her upset because her father didn’t see a career to come out of a degree in Women’s Studies. Both Stein and Brownell cite numerous graduates who have gone on to successful careers in business, the humanities, education.

“They can be anything they want,” said Stein, “from aviators to zoologists.”

Brownell said she expects to be cheering “very loudly” tonight for her longtime colleague.

“It is a very exciting and prestigious award.”

afleming@projo.com