Sunday November 17, 2024, 2:45PM MST Uday Kulkarni understands the value of higher education as a man that comes from generations of knowledge and where lesser options were unspoken and intolerable within his family.
Kulkarni recently retired from Arizona State University in 2022 after 40 years as a professor in the Master of Business Administration program, focusing on Information Systems.
“Everyone in my family has some form of higher education, even the ones still in India,” says Kulkarni nonchalantly. “It just wasn’t an option for us to not have a higher learning experience.”
Uday and his then wife Sarita trekked to the United States back in 1988 with then four-year-old daughter Anshula in tow. His plan was only one, come to America to get the best education the world had to offer.
“My father and mother came from their generations of understanding this lifelong value, and we wanted the same continuation.”
Continuation is exactly what they currently have with their three daughters who have all followed in the same footsteps, as all three have either a Masters or Doctorates degree. Their current occupations are aerospace engineer, a medical doctor, and a corporate sales executive. A present-day display of generational learning and the value of higher education.
Sarirta, the patriarch of the family, succumbed to lung cancer in May of 2021 not too long after the Covid crisis and after being in remission of the same diagnosis for over five years. She was a retired teacher for the Arizona Public School systems, teaching in the elementary and middle school areas throughout her entire 35-year career.
notsomediaocre.com 
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