2024 Day of Giving

We appreciate your support, today, and every day.

Generous donations from alumni and donors continue to support the professional development of our students and prepare them for postgraduate success in careers, graduate study, and lives of service. Thanks to your support, our Department ensures that sociology students’ education with us provides the foundational skills and training to set them up for success after they graduate!

We have many reasons to be thankful as a Department. We continue to attract exceptional students to our major and celebrate the engaged support of talented alumni (including one who was named a Fulbright Fellow in 2022!). We have 115 majors and minors studying in our department this year, including 42 seniors graduating this year!

Generous donations from alumni and donors continue to support the professional development of our students and prepare them for postgraduate success in careers, graduate study, and lives of service. For example, over the summer Bryce Nishikawa ‘24 received a REAL Fellowship to intern with TurnUp Youth Activism to empower the next generation of American youth to become active voters. Transfer students Jessica Cuellar and Celeste Perales have been conducting interviews with Professors Nichols and Chiaraluce to better understand the experiences of our sociology majors who are also transfer students. Judith Li ‘23 received a Miller Center Lewis Family Fellowship to explore a social entrepreneurial solution to safe water access in East Africa. The Silicon Valley Sociological Review, the department’s undergraduate research journal, released its 20th volume last summer – featuring seven incredible publications from eight of our majors. Beyond this, all of our majors explored a variety of fascinating topics in their capstones last spring – and we look forward to what this year’s capstones will bring as well! These are just some of the wonderful things our students are doing because of support from our alumni and donors. 

Our department is building a vibrant community where our students form ties that last a lifetime. This spring we are building new professionalization events as our department is very enthusiastic about our work with students to energize our sociology community on campus and after graduation. We are delighted that the Sociology Club plays an essential role in the professional socialization of our students thanks to student engagement and mentorship from the Club’s faculty advisor, Professor Maggie Hunter, whom we welcomed as a new faculty member to our department this year. 

All of these amazing accomplishments wouldn't be possible without the support of people like YOU in our community!