Faculty Retirements: Innovators in Scholarship and Research

Sharon Nickel Snowiss

Professor of Political Studies

For 55 years, Sharon Snowiss has pushed the boundaries of political studies at Pitzer in her pursuit of throught-provoking questions about society's future.  

Snowiss received an MA and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an AB from the University of California, Berkeley. Since joining Pitzer in 1969, Snowiss has contributed her expertise in futurology, mind/body healing, technology’s social and philosophical impact, and more. Her courses have included Introduction to Political Philosophy: Political Thought East and West; Feminist Political Thought; What is Human?; and Science, Politics and Alternative Medicine. She also taught as an Avery Fellow in Claremont Graduate University’s Department of Politics and Policy. 
 

Snowiss earned an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to develop her Nature, Movement, and Meditation in Qì gōng course in spring 2002, combining cutting-edge technology and millennia-old beliefs. Long before remote learning became common practice, she leveraged video-streaming technology to connect her students with Beijing University and teach them about traditional Chinese healing practices. 

She has also served in college governance roles dating to Pitzer’s early years. As the chair of what was then the Executive Committee of the Faculty, she worked to revise the goernance structure to its current philosophy of shared governance and worked on an intercollegiate committee to establish the structure of the Ethnic Studies Center. She also was part of initiatives to create majors in Gender and Feminist Studies, International and Intercultural Studies, and the option for Human Biology in Cross-Cultural Health and Healing. In 1979-80, as FEC chair, Snowiss said, “Uppermost in our minds in all these plans is how to best meet the needs of the students.” 

David S. Moore

Professor of Psychology

Since joining Pitzer in 1989, David Moore has studied cognitive development with a focus on the perceptions and capabilities of infants. His courses have included Monkey Business: Controversies in Human Evolution; Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience; and Seeking Human Nature: The History and Science of Innateness, among others.

Moore founded the Claremont Infant Study Center in 1989. Empirical research in his lab produced many influential publications, including several with students as co-authors. Moore received two National Science Foundation grants for his study of infant development and had a key role in creating Pitzer’s cognitive science major.

Moore holds a BA in psychology from Tufts University and an MA and PhD in developmental psychology from Harvard University. Moore’s theoretical research interests include genetic and epigenetic contributions to development. He authored two books on these topics, The Dependent Gene and The Developing Genome. The latter earned the American Psychological Association’s Eleanor Maccoby Book Award and the William James Book Award from the Society for General Psychology. 
 

From 2016 to 2018, Moore served as the director of the Developmental Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. He was also an American Psychological Association Fellow and a Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellow at Stanford University from 2023-24. Additionally, Moore served as a science consultant from 2019-2024 on the DARPA-funded Machine Common Sense program, which sought to use infant development to improve artificial intelligence.

In retirement, Moore will remain an active scholar, educator, and science consultant. His next scholarly endeavor includes his 2024–25 Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.