Marilyn W. Hoskins RSS has honored me twice for which I am most grateful. First in 1991, you gave me the award for Distinguished Service to Rural Life, and now I have been nominated to run for a seat on the Council. As an anthropologist, I have had the opportunity to work in research and applied social science, both in the US and abroad. In Southeast Asia (5 years) I worked with UNESCO researching issues that rural communities identified as problems and developing relevant information for rural training centers. I wrote an ethnography and did a study on the differential impacts of development projects on women and men. In Africa (5 years), I did research in rural communities in the Sahel for an African socio-­‐economic research institute. Returning to the US, I became the Title XII Chair at Virginia Tech, Department of Sociology, and established and directed the Participatory Development Program. Besides teaching and writing I continued to do research in rural Virginia and abroad and was a Fellow in the East-­‐West Center’s Resource Systems and Environment and Policy Institute. In 1984 I joined the UN (11 years) as the first social scientist in the Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization. I designed and backstopped projects focusing on social and policy issues related to forest and environment activities in developing countries. I was responsible for a multi-­‐
donor, global program, Forests, Trees and People, run with a network of local facilitators from Asia, Africa and Latin America. We identified issues, did research and testing of theories as well as training and policy recommendations. We published over 50 documents and made videos on subjects ranging from legal environments for participation in forest management, institutional analysis of forests and forestry projects to the design of forestry projects for better nutrition. Returning to the US I have volunteered with NGOs, spent three years as a Scholar in Residence with Lin Ostrom at Indiana University, and have continued teaching, writing and mentoring. Academic Background: o
Ohio State University BS 1955, MA 1957. o
Catholic University of America MS 1973. o
State University of New York Doctor of Humane Letters 1999 o
Syracuse University Doctor of Humane Letters for outstanding contributions to the field of international rural development 1999.