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Dear Alumni and Friends,
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the first web-based department newsletter produced under the editorial direction of our colleague Katia Moles. The transition to this platform is part of our ongoing effort to reimagine the future of sociology at Santa Clara. We are pursuing other initiatives to support this transformative process. Since the Winter quarter, our department has engaged in a process of reflection about our curriculum. Our goal is to facilitate our degree completion while providing more choices to pursue different fields of study in sociology. Another effort underway is to hire additional faculty in light of the expected retirements.
I am also happy to report the department has renewed its efforts to work in conjunction with our Sociological Club to support student engagement. Thanks to the efforts of our colleague Cara Chiaraluce, we have strengthened our relations with the AKD Honor Society. We expanded our funding to support internship opportunities and merit-based awards. Finally, as part of our commitment to our students, we redesigned our flagship publication, the Silicon Valley Notebook, under the able editorial guide of our colleague Marilyn Fernandez.
I am proud to report that all this work has not interfered with our many professional accomplishments. This year, all of our faculty published, many presented at academic conferences and serviced our profession. Patrick Aguado, Laura Nichols, and Marilyn Fernandez published books. The visibility of the department increased with several campus lectures. As we move forward this academic year, we plan to continue these efforts in addition to hosting another visiting scholar and organizing the 45th annual student conference. All in all, we stay committed to promoting sociology and to live the teacher/scholar model that identifies Santa Clara University as one of the most distinguished liberal art institutions in the nation.
Enrique Pumar
Department Chair, Sociology
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