{"id":23743,"date":"2017-05-25T18:56:48","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T18:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=23743"},"modified":"2024-09-13T17:04:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T21:04:16","slug":"two-uconn-faculty-members-receive-new-award-for-supporting-grad-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/05\/two-uconn-faculty-members-receive-new-award-for-supporting-grad-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Engineering Faculty Members Receive New Award for Supporting Grad Students"},"content":{"rendered":"Ranjan Srivastava (left), department head of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with Christine Endicott, a graduate student who nominated him for the Family Support Award.\n

Two UConn Engineering faculty members recently received a new award for promoting a healthy work\/life balance for their graduate students.<\/p>\n

Ranjan Srivastava, professor and department head of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Christine Kirchoff, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Family Support Award. As its name suggests, the award from the UConn Graduate School seeks to recognize faculty members who are supportive and understanding of graduate students balancing family obligations and research needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this award is critical recognition,\u201d said Srivastava. He pointed out that the time requirements placed on graduate students can be daunting, and anyone who studies engineering as a graduate student must love their research.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a mentor the least I can do is recognize that and when challenges come up, if I can facilitate anything in that realm I\u2019m happy to do so,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kirchoff echoed Srivastava\u2019s comments. She said that it\u2019s impressive for two Engineering faculty to receive this award, given the general difficulty of the program.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Christine Kirchoff, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with the Family Support Award she recently received.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cGiven how demanding the program is for students and faculty, the fact that we\u2019re able to still meet the high demands of the program while supporting the work life balance of our students says something important about what we do here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kirchoff was nominated for her award by Berdakh Utemuratov, one of her graduate students who studies groundwater governance. Srivastava was nominated for the award by Christine Endicott \u201908 (Chemical Engineering), one of his graduate students. She said she became aware of the award after she contacted Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate School Kent Holsinger and Assistant Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs Victoria Blodgett of the Graduate School.<\/p>\n

\u201cI contacted Victoria Blodgett and Kent Holsinger at the Graduate School, because I wanted to share my thoughts about what it\u2019s like to be a grad student and parent. In that conversation they let me know about the award,\u201d Endicott said.<\/p>\n

Endicott said that Srivastava has been a mentor since she arrived at UConn in 2004, and when she returned to UConn for her doctorate it was a natural choice to work with him. She said that she nominated Srivastava because he\u2019s been so supportive of her family life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found out that my husband and I were expecting, there probably wasn\u2019t anyone who was more excited than Dr. Srivastava. He was happy for me and my family and willing to make any accommodations that I needed with lab and research time, which made the whole process very easy,\u201d Endicott said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The award recognizes faculty who help graduate students achieve a healthy work-life balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":218880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[42],"class_list":["post-23743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-04 00:48:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218884,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23743\/revisions\/218884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/218880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23743"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=23743"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}