| Contact |
Media Relations
|
|---|
In honor of Women’s History Month, the publication Diverse: Issues in Higher Education has named Salem State University Professor Sara Moore among 35 outstanding women in higher education. Every March, Diverse highlights outstanding women to feature the achievements of women in the academy.
“We are looking for women, like Sara, who have made a difference in the academy by tackling some of higher education’s toughest challenges, exhibiting extraordinary leadership skills and making a positive difference in their respective communities,” said Maya Minter, vice president of editorial and productions at Diverse.
Minter nominated Moore, a professor of sociology and Salem resident, after learning about the university’s newest model for civic engagement called Critically Engaged Civic Learning (CECL) and Moore’s 2019 CECL project, for which students in her public sociology course worked with third graders from Salem’s Horace Mann School on a collaborative photography project that explored food justice and health equity in Salem.
“Before the project, they thought that health was about making good food choices and getting good exercise. What they learned was health can depend on the community you live in, in terms of what you have access to,” said Moore. “That’s so empowering for young people to realize that behaviors, like food choices, don’t just happen, and instead are informed by our culture and our policies.”
Moore’s daughter, Emerson, is now a third grader at the Horace Mann School and hopes to be a part of her mother’s next collaborative CECL project.
“I think raising a child in Salem that’s so full of women leaders, and working at a university where we have a lot of women leaders, she is able to see a role model for leadership, at least I hope she does. I talk a lot about what it means to think critically about an issue, to take a stand, to use your voice, to be kind and thoughtful, and that being a leader is about bringing people together and not about telling people what to do,” Moore said.