Jindal School Professor Recognized for Mentoring Excellence

by External Relations Staff - May 10th, 2018 - Faculty/Research

Dr. Inga Messelman gives award to Dr. Suresh Radhakrishnan. — Dr. Inga Musselman bestowing the 2018 Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring to Dr. Suresh Radhakrishnan at the Doctoral Hooding ceremony

A faculty member in the Naveen Jindal School of Management was recognized during the spring 2018 Doctoral Hooding Ceremony at The University of Texas at Dallas for sustained excellence in graduate research mentoring.

Dr. Suresh Radhakrishnan, Constantine Konstans Distinguished Professor of accounting and information management, was recognized May 8 as the recipient of the 2018 Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring.

“The award belongs to the students and my colleagues for their hard work and support,” Radhakrishnan said. “Successful mentoring would not have been possible otherwise.”

Dr. Inga Musselman, vice president for academic affairs and provost, created the mentoring awards and presented them at the hooding ceremony. In a letter announcing recipients, she wrote that she established the honors “to formally recognize faculty mentors who demonstrate superior leadership, support and guidance towards the development of UT Dallas undergraduate and graduate researcher endeavors.”

This is the second year that the graduate award has been in existence; the undergraduate award was first bestowed in 2013. Dr. Poras T. Balsara, professor of electrical engineering and associate dean for academic affairs in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, won the graduate award in 2017.

Dr. Marion Underwood, dean of graduate studies and associate provost, and the Office of Graduate Studies administered the application process. A faculty committee selected recipients from 11 nominees. They included Radhakrishnan’s fellow JSOM faculty member Dr. Seung-Hyun Lee, coordinator of the school’s Organizations, Strategy and International Management Area.

Prior to calling Radhakrishnan to the lectern, Musselman read from some of the nomination letters., Dr. Ram Natarajan, associate professor of accounting in the Jindal School, wrote that Radhakrishnan “had been involved in the dissertations of as much as half of the PhD students who have graduated from our doctoral program [in accounting] since its inception.”

Dr. Albert Tsang, PhD ’08, MS ’02, associate professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University, wrote that, “mentoring is the heart of the PhD education, and with this heart, [Radhakrishnan] shows us more than what we can learn from any books, papers or lectures. He not only taught us how to do research, but he also demonstrated the way by which one can earn respect from the academic profession.”

Dr. Paul Mason, PhD ’08, assistant professor of accounting and business law at Baylor University, wrote in his nominating letter that Radhakrishnan “provided a perfect balance between offering direction and suggestions while allowing for independence during the completion of my degree.”

Mason also explained that Radhakrishnan approached his role as a mentor by contributing “to the scholarship and professional development of the mentee even if it doesn’t benefit him directly.” This, Mason explained, is how he knew that “a true mentoring relationship exists.”