Interdisciplinary Ph.D. student earns multiple awards
Vivek Agrahari, PhD student in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chemistry, has recently earned two awards.
The first was the 2015 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Graduate Student Research Award within the Analysis and Pharmaceutical Quality section. For this, Agrahari will receive a plaque and recognition during the plenary session of the 2015 AAPS meeting in Orlando, Florida.
The second is the 2015 Nicholas Peppas Student Travel Grant to attend the 2015 Controlled Release Society’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in Edinburgh, Scotland. This is a very competitive international award.
Congratulations, Vivek!
Graduate Writing area is now available within the Writing Studio
Two dual-monitor workstations are now available specifically for graduate students within the Writing Studio in the Atterbury Student Success Center. These two workstations, which include software that is helpful for writing, are part of the Graduate Student Writing Initiative. The Initiative has also implemented an organization site within Blackboard, to which all graduate students have access. There are also workshops and other resources to come. Look for more information in the coming months, and contact the Writing Studio to reserve one of the two workstations.
Fundraising efforts for the School of Graduate Studies 50th year celebration exceeds expectations
On a national basis, graduate schools have a tough job raising funds through development. Often, graduate alumni identify with their academic unit and provide support directly to those units. However, with the 50th year anniversary of the School of Graduate Studies, we decided to give a fundraising effort a try. The major goals of the initiative were to increase the value of the MacQuarrie Fellowship fund for graduate students and to identify and obtain support from local industry for named graduate student awards.
Initially, the Dean had several conversations with staff and the Development Director and its feasibility as no such event was ever tried at UMKC. We had a modest goal of raising $10,000 to $20,000. As some of you may recall, the slogan used was “Fifty dollars for 50 years.” Well, we were surprised but pleased that we were able to exceed our goals in that $21,560 was raised in this campaign. We consider this a success. Even though this may be considered small from the perspective of an academic unit, by Graduate School standards, even trying is remarkable. About $14,000 was added to the MacQuarrie Fellowship fund and the rest were obtained from Otis Worldwide of United Technologies Corporation for the Outstanding Dissertation Award, Coventry Health Care for the Distinguished Master’s Award, and Staples for the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award.
The value of the MacQuarrie endowment is now around $40,000 and will continue to grow yearly with investments and additional contributions. We are already awarding scholarships from this fund. More importantly, this fund will eventually become very large where the endowment can make a significant difference in the lives of future generations of UMKC graduate students. To all those who participated in this event, the School of Graduate Studies says “thank you!”