Dr. Sudarshan Kurwadkar, assistant professor of environmental engineering at Tarleton State University, received the Early Career Award from the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) during the organization’s annual conference June 10-13 in San Antonio.

The ASEE annually presents the award to an untenured faculty member to encourage participation from newcomers in the field of environmental education. Nominees for the award are required to submit a paper for presentation and publication at ASEE’s annual conference.

Kurwadkar, a two-year member in Tarleton’s Department of Engineering and Physics, co-authored a paper titled “Undergraduate Environmental Engineering Research Experiences in a Predominantly Undergraduate Teaching Institute,” along with department head Dr. Daniel Marble, an assistant professor of engineering and physics.

Their paper documents the pro-active approach taken by Tarleton to facilitate research activities through internally funded grants awarded through the Office of Student Research and Creative Activities (OSRCA) and Organized Research Grant (ORG) through the University Research Committee.

The paper discussed three environmental engineering undergraduate research projects completed between 2009 and 2011 by individual students under the mentorship of Kurwadkar.

“The publication of this manuscript was particularly important because unlike typical research institutes, this paper highlighted the internal efforts in predominantly teaching universities in facilitating research activities,” said Kurwadkar.

The ASEE annual conference and exposition is the only conference dedicated to all disciplines of engineering education.

Kurwadkar was also recently recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as one of its ExCEEd fellows and was named one of 125 “Fresh Faces” by the scientific research society Sigma Xi.