Hackworth Research Grant Winners, Fall 2007

Faculty

Marilyn Edelstein, SCU Department of English, $5,000 for a project called "The Ethics of Reading: Can Literature Help Develop Cross- Racial Empathy and Understanding?" This interdisciplinary project will explore how and why literature (especially fiction, which creates a temporary "world" of characters who become real for us as we read) can help its readers develop the interrelated capacities for empathy and imagination. Drawing on literature, moral philosophy, and psychology, Professor Edelstein hopes to demonstrate that multicultural literature can enhance simultaneously readers' cognitive, affective, and ethical development, and in turn may help to shape our ethical relations to others (as well as our understandings of ourselves).

Students

Hooria Bittlingmayer, SCU Graduate Department of Counseling Psychology, $2,500 for a project called "Mindfulness Meditation: Cultivating Compassion, Wisdom, and Moral Development in Santa Clara University Graduate Students." Ms. Bittlingmayer's study will attempt to examine the effects of an 8- week meditation- based course on cultivating essential aspects of SCU's mission: namely, compassion and conscience. In particular, the study will address the questions: Does mindfulness meditation cultivate compassion, wisdom, and moral development? Are there differences in the effects of mindfulness meditation for business school graduate students compared to students in the helping professions?

Audrey Redmond, SCU School of Law, $2,500 to support a daylong conference at SCU called "Common Grounds, Common Waters: Toward a Water Ethic." Ms. Redmond is the Editor- in -Chief of the School of Law's Journal of International Law, which together with the School of Law's Center for Global Law and Policy is presenting the daylong conference on March 14, 2008, on the challenge of developing a common ethical framework to guide the allocation of freshwater resources throughout the world. Fresh water is an essential and increasingly scarce resource required by all people, regardless of class or culture. This conference will bring together people representing different interests in water, such as the commercial water industry, agriculture, government, environmental organizations, indigenous peoples, and human rights organizations.