CAMPUS NEWS
FAMED SOCIOLOGIST AWARDED HONORARY DEGREE
W
estminster College awarded Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild, renowned Berkeley sociologist and author, with an honorary Doctor of Letters degree on April 5.
Hochschild also offered a public lecture, discussing her New York Times best-seller, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Hochschild’s book, a finalist for the National Book Award, recounts her experience of scaling an “empathy wall” by immersing herself in the lives of Louisiana Tea Party supporters. In her book, she studies people whose physical environments and health have been seriously compromised by petrochemical and oil pollution and attempts to
understand the “Great Paradox”—the fierce opposition to federal assistance from those very people and places that need it. As a scholar, Hochschild— professor emerita of sociology from UC Berkeley—has been at the forefront of research on contemporary work and family life for more than 30 years. She is the author of nine books, including The Second Shift, The Time Bind, The Managed Heart and The Outsourced Self. The winner of the Ulysses Medal as well as Guggenheim and Mellon grants, she lives in Berkeley, Calif. Hochschild’s lecture was sponsored by the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, the Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies programs, Alpha Kappa Delta and SCION.
Online graduate program gets national ranking
W
estminster’s online graduate program was recognized as one of the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report. Programs were ranked according to their performance across a set of widely accepted indicators of excellence, including student engagement, admissions selectivity, faculty credentials and training, and peer reputation. The ranking marks the success of the Graduate School’s 2015 decision to create online versions of its educational offerings. Westminster’s Graduate Program in Education offers online degree and certification-only tracks, including master’s degrees in education, school counseling, dual special education/reading specialist, school principal, school superintendent and the newly-added master of arts degree in clinical mental health counseling. The new master’s in clinical mental health counseling is a cohort program aimed at developing a professional counseling identity. The program features tracks in adult, youth and school counseling, with specialty study options in trauma and rural/distance counseling. 8 w w w.w e s t m i n s t e r. e d u
