THE BELL CURVE:

I spent last weekend in the company of 15 college seniors, each of whom won $10,000 awards a year ago from the Donald A. Straus Scholarship Foundation. Each student had 20 minutes to tell the foundation’s board members — with whom I was privileged to serve — how they used this money in the betterment of some segment of humankind. That was on Friday. On Saturday, board members went through some 40 new proposals from which we selected the 14 that will be similarly engaged over the coming year.

The key to the Strauss scholarships — which are gaining more attention yearly as recipients sustain their proposals into important public programs — is service.

In its eligibility guidelines, the foundation defines this as “the desire to make a difference in local, regional, national or international communities.”

This desire illumed the lives of Don and Dorothy Strauss, who raised a family and served their community in a host of ways for well over half a century in Newport Beach. Don, for example, served as mayor, city councilman and school board member, Dorothy as a college English teacher and the driving force in creating the foundation in memory of her husband.

Don died in 1995, Dorothy two years later, but not before she had time to take part in the selection of the first Strauss scholars.

From the beginning, the foundation was set up specifically to encourage service, a concept that doesn’t come easily in a world in which division, both domestic and international, is more the rule.

But the Strauss focus will have none of that. Candidates have to offer a specific project addressing a social need or problem in which scholarship funds could be used to seek solutions.

What kind of problems?

Well, there’s Mike Michalski, who created a communications system for five remote villages in Nepal that has defied Maoist insurgents and power failures to bring education to hundreds of isolated children.

Or Tess Bridgman, who founded an organization called Bridge to Community Health in Oaxaca, Mexico, that conducted workshops with more than 2,000 women on nutrition and food preparation and taught villagers how to market a local product called amaranth seeds.

Or Daniel Zoughbie, who created 50 micro-clinics for the treatment of diabetes in Palestine where poverty and an almost total lack of health education make diabetes a leading cause of death and disability.

The Strauss Foundation celebrated its 10th birthday last year and the achievements described above were but a few notables of that first decade.

Ten years of projects like these produced three Rhodes Scholars, five Truman Scholars and eight Fulbrights — among many other honors.

Having a small part in it was a great satisfaction for me, which may produce some regret that I chose to retire from the board last week to take care of a bundle of other matters that needed attention.

My last class was very much up to par. Among the services they delivered were cell phones for health workers in rural Malawi. And converting mountain bicycles into wheelchairs to navigate the rough terrain in Guatemala. And creating a rehabilitative organic garden with prisoners at the California Institute for Women.

There are 14 new projects as creative as these. A pair of students at UC Davis will lead a group of volunteers to harvest and collect surplus food produced on fruit trees and in backyard gardens and share the produce with those in need.

Another project will provide increased advocacy and support for veterans. Yet another will bring Stanford and Russian students together in regular meetings.

One vision that I will surely take with me was the student in the Friday group who sat next to me. His name is Jesse Dubler, and he was completely deaf.

His project was an international clearinghouse for pelagic plastics, and he gave an animated performance that was translated to us hearing folks by an aide who accompanied him and a fellow student who understood signage.

I was feeling sorry for myself because my own hearing — with aids in place — was only picking up fractions of what was being said.

But this young man, who heard nothing at all, was as spirited in his signage as any of the other presenters in their speech. That’s the image I took away with me.

These young people take service seriously, wherever in the world they find a need for it. And they’re out there, lots of them. I’ll take their image with me, too.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.