The Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation, established as a memorial to the late Don Strauss of Newport Beach and now designed to award $10,000 scholarships to at least 14 California college juniors annually, has announced that among the foundation’s new group of recipients are Scripps College students Jenoa Cohen and Rosie Poitra-Chalmers.
The Strauss scholarships fund public-service projects that the students have proposed and will carry out this summer during their senior year. Jenoa Cohen, of Phoenix, Arizona, will carry out a financial literacy program in Arizona for underserved women, "WI$E-UP: Women’s Independence Secured Economically." Rosie Poitra-Chalmers, of Olympia, Washington, will investigate issues related to social justice, civil rights, preventative health care, legal instruction, and the tools of multi-media ESL instruction in her project "Breaking Down Barriers with Language," tailored to fit the needs of the day labor population in Southern California.
Don Strauss demonstrated a strong, life-long commitment to public service and education, reflected by his serving 10 years on the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board, and 12 years on the Newport Beach City Council, including one as mayor. Strauss also founded summer internships in Washington, D.C., for students at Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of Rhode Island, the California Institute of Technology and Harvey Mudd College and endowed scholarships at Stanford, U.C. Irvine and Harvey Mudd. He died in 1995 at the age of 79.
Strauss’ widow, Dorothy M.R. Strauss, established the foundation in January of 1997 as a "tribute to the vision, ideals and leadership of Donald A. Strauss." In its first year, the foundation board invited 10 universities to nominate up to three students each for Strauss scholarships, with the board making the final selection of the 10 winners. (Dorothy Strauss saw her vision for the Foundation realized – she phoned each of the 10 first-year winners to notify them personally – before she passed away in October of 1997 at the age of 83.)
In the second year the Foundation was able to broaden its reach and award 15 $10,000 scholarships, and now gives no fewer than 14 each year. This new group represents the Foundation’s fifth year of awarding such scholarships, and like their counterparts in the past, all of these recipients have extensive records of community and public service, as well as a demonstrated desire to "make a difference."