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Linda Abriola
Photo: J.J. Zhou

Graduate Fellowship

Extending Dean Abriola’s Legacy

What better way to honor an innovative educator than to invest in the future of promising students? The Board of Advisors to the School of Engineering has done just that, creating a graduate fellowship fund in honor of Linda Abriola, the school’s dean for more than a decade. Abriola, who is also a professor of civil and environmental engineering, will return to the faculty as a University Professor when she steps down from her leadership role later this summer.

Along with his family, Steven Karol, A76, A04P, A13P, chair of the school’s Board of Advisors, offered a “chairman’s challenge” to match gifts from the rest of the board. The board responded enthusiastically. The university, through its Financial Aid Initiative, will match the board’s total to create an endowment of more than $1.3 million for the graduate fellowship.

“The board wanted to do something for Linda,” Karol says. “We’ve watched the school grow and develop significantly under her leadership. In just about every category, the school is far better off than it was when she got here.”

On Abriola’s watch, the School of Engineering has grown in size, quality, and national visibility. In 2014, the undergraduate acceptance rate was at a highly selective fourteen percent, with women making up a third of the student body. And applications to the graduate school have increased by twenty-two percent. The school has also established the Center for STEM Diversity to foster the recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented groups in engineering and the sciences.

As a researcher, Abriola is an expert in groundwater contamination and remediation. She has developed widely used mathematical models to describe the movement of contaminants in the ground.

“Dean Abriola has made a big difference both at Tufts and within the field of engineering,” Karol says. “Hopefully her legacy and this fellowship in her honor will continue that important work.”

—BRENDA CONAWAY

 
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