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Claudia Strauss, Pitzer professor of anthropology, has been awarded a Russell Sage Foundation fellowship that she will be taking in the fall. The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. The foundation is in New York City and serves as a research center and funding source for studies by scholars at other institutions. The foundation also publishes the books that derive from the work of its grantees and visiting scholars. Strauss will be researching a book based on interviews in two southern communities that examines popular views of the importance of market exchange, need and moral desert as distributive principles governing different social goods. Strauss said she is interested in whether there is anything that people feel entitled to as citizens and how they feel such things should be distributed. Should it be based on need? Should recipients be "deserving?" Or should they have to pay for it? Strauss said she found in her preliminary analysis that what looks like free enterprise is actually an emphasis on moral deservingness. Her investigations of North Carolina communities revealed that there is the idea that if you've worked hard, then you deserve a good life. Strauss said many of the people interviewed aren't really thinking in abstract terms of the state and its role, but are thinking in terms of what is a good person. In their view, a good society should support a good person.
Jose Calderon, Pitzer professor of sociology and Chicano studies, was named one of 15 finalists out of a field of 141 nominations for the Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning. The finalists were chosen for their work connecting community service to their coursework on their campus and promoting service-learning nationally. The awards are sponsored by Campus Compact, a national coalition of more than 900 college and university presidents committed to the civic purposes of higher education. Calderon also was recently appointed to the Advisory Council of the Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement. He also has been invited to speak at the National Science Foundation workshop in June.
Norma Rodriguez accepted an award on behalf of Pitzer's New Resource Program from Soroptimist International of the Foothills on April 24. The program received the club's Advancing the Status of Women Award. Soroptimist International is a local women's service organization that is affiliated with more than 200 clubs worldwide and made up of business and professional women in the community.
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