Page 7 - UD Magazine Vol. 31 No. 1

It’s a small world, after all
There are some things that stand the test of time. Global education is one of them.
One hundred years ago, a 28-year-old Army veteran named Raymond Kirkbride had an idea: Expose young people to the world, he thought, and maybe you can change the world.
It did. He did. If you’re among the millions of people to have ever studied abroad, you have the late UD professor to thank.
I have my parents. My father was a chief engineer in the Indian Merchant Marine who sailed the world and named me after his first love, the ocean. My mother was a fearless woman whose dreams of stability, security, opportunity and prosperity brought us to this country.
My parents arrived in America, as many immigrants do, on student visas. In Delaware, they found new purpose. My dad, Chakravarthi Ravi Rangan, EOE90M, ENG00M, worked for 29 years as an environmental engineer, monitoring Delaware City’s oil refineries and implementing controls to reduce harmful airborne contaminants like sulfur dioxide, which dropped from 140 parts per billion to near-zero, thanks to his efforts.
My mom, Rashmi Rangan, BSPA93M, runs the Delaware Community Reinvestment Action Council, a nonprofit dedicated to fair housing, fair lending and economic justice. When an attorney once chided her for helping a client with a legal problem, she immediately enrolled in law school, earning her J.D. while working (and parenting) full time.
My parents taught me how to be a global citizen right here in Delaware. They taught me to love this world and the people in it, and to do my small part to make it better. I try. In this publication, our entire team has the great honor of sharing the stories of those who do, Blue Hens who transform their “small part” into a lasting legacy of positive impact.
One story of positive impact comes from President Dennis Assanis, who has navigated UD through a global pandemic
Editor Artika Rangan
Casini, AS05, with her Blue Hen parents, Ravi Rangan, EOE90M, ENG00M, and Rashmi Rangan, BSPA93M, pictured at left at her law school graduation.
while leading the University’s largest and most transformative fundraising campaign to date. As it turns out, he also hails from abroad (Athens, Greece) and has sailed the world with a father in the Merchant Marine (his was a captain). The fact that we both landed in Newark, Delaware, of all places, reminds me that it’s a small world, after all.
But maybe it takes a small state to understand a small world; to know implicitly that we’re all connected, with something to share, something to give and something deeply profound to learn from each other.
Professor Kirkbride knew this well. Expose young people to the world around them, he realized, and their world will change. Almost inevitably for the better.
Artika Rangan Casini, AS05
Editor (and a UD study abroad student in Costa Rica in winter 2003. Pura Vida!)
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