Community Action

Margaret Andersen has had an incredible range of service and leadership positions throughout her career. These vary from serving as one of the founders of the American Sociological Association’s MOST program and being a co-director of that program at the University of Delaware, to serving as president of the Eastern Sociological Society. Although Dr Andersen finds it relatively difficult to summarize her work with the various organizations she has participated in over the years, she does say that much of her work has been “in the spirit of making institutions and organizations more diverse and open to women and people of color.” Several universities can attest to this statement, as they saw Dr. Andersen working for numerous years to change and improve curriculums in order to include more research and scholarship on race and gender “throughout— not just in courses on those particular subjects.” She has also worked on projects whose purposes were to encourage, and support the participation of minority students in order to decrease the homogeny of faculty and research scholars and increase racial and ethnic diversity in this academic scope. Additionally Dr Andersen has served as both Dean and Provost for the University of Delaware, positions which encompassed tasks such as budgeting, dealing with a variety of personal issues, and pushing for more equity in terms of sexism and racism at the university. Throughout participation in these organizations, Dr Andersen maintains that her sociological background never failed her, saying that much of her work has been like a “form of applied sociology” and that her “sociological judgment and perspective [were] really important” in these positions. Margaret Andersen is also currently the Chair of the National Advisory Board for the Stanford University Center for Comparative Study in Race and Ethnicity and plays an active role in a number of professional organizations such as the American Sociological Association whose Council she has served on. Finally she is often asked to serve as consultant to different university and college campuses in the development and reviews of their respective curriculums.