KOCHI: In a proud moment for the School of Management Studies (SMS) at Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat), an assistant professor and an alumna won Fulbright scholarships instituted by the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) to promote academic dialogues on issues of contemporary interest and facilitate research by scholars in the US.
Devi Soumyaja, assistant professor at SMS, is one among the three academicians who won the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (Research and Teaching) worth $22,500 (over Rs 16.89 lakh) for her research on academic bullying from a gendered perspective.
Soumyaja, who has been working on areas related to gender and management, workplace practices, workplace bullying, and change management, is an advisory member to the Women Studies Centre in Cusat.
Currently at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of her academic fellowship, Soumyaja’s project titled ‘Academic Bullying: The role of gender and culture – A cross-cultural study between India and US’ aims at understanding the prevalence, forms, and perceptions of academic bullying experienced in academia, from a gendered perspective.
Chandra Vadhana R, alumna of SMS and a social entrepreneur, is one among the 22 researchers from India who won the USEIF Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral scholarship worth over Rs 70 lakh to pursue research in the Gender Innovation Lab at Stanford University, California, for two years.
Vadhana’s doctoral research involved the standardization of a psychometric tool for the assessment of managerial soft skills. She is an entrepreneur who runs Prayaana Labs, a non-profit organization aiming at employability and entrepreneurship development for girls and women.
