• The first Women’s Studies course at an American university was established in 1969-70.
  
  
• IU offered its first classes in Spring 1972 at IU South Bend and Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne.
  
  
• The first minors were offered in 1976 at IPFW and in 1980 at IUSB. Minors are also offered at IU Bloomington, IU East, IU Kokomo, IU Northwest, and IUPUI.
  
  
• The first area certificate in Women's Studies was offered at IU Southeast in New Albany in 1980.
  
  
• The first annual Women's Studies/Gender Studies Undergraduate Student Conference was begun in 1988 at IUSB; it is the longest running undergraduate student research conference at IU.

• The first Women's Studies major (offered at either IU or Purdue) was offered at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne in 1992. IU South Bend offered a WS major beginning in 1999.
  
  
• The first Gender Studies degree was offered at IU Bloomington in 1997, the same year that Women's Studies (begun in 1973 at IUB) changed its name to Gender Studies.
  
  
• The first endowed faculty position, the Peg Zeglin Brand Chair in Gender Studies, was created at IU Bloomington by IU alumna Dale Stark Leff and her late husband, Norman Leff, in 1996.
  
  
• The first Ph.D. minor was offered at IU Bloomington in 1980 and the campus now offers a Ph.D in Gender Studies.

When Sarah Parke Morrison enrolled in 1867, Indiana University became the first state university in the country to admit women on equal terms with men.