MSASS grad to carry on family tradition

Social work has always been in Bhuvana Nandakumar's blood. It just took her a while to realize it.

Nandakumar, who will graduate from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences with a combined master's degree in social administration (MSSA) and master of nonprofit organizations (MNO) degree, comes from a long line of social workers in her native India. Both of her parents were social workers, as was one of her grandmothers, who was a close associate of Mahatma Ghandi and started a school for girls in the 1940s.

"That was at a time when educating girls was not a high priority," she points out.

With all that, Nandakumar's first professional degrees were in ... physics.

"Physics was always the subject I liked most, and I enjoyed teaching it," she says.

Still, social work was never far from her thoughts. Even while getting her master's degree in physics she was volunteering at a job training program in New Delhi.

"Social work is my passion," she explains.

Nandakumar soon got the chance to pursue that passion. In 1997 her husband moved to the United States to enroll in an MBA program at Northwestern. She remained in India, and they saw each other only intermittently until she moved to the U.S. in 1999.

"That gave me the opportunity to rethink what I wanted to do with my life," she recalls.

After exploring several programs in social work she settled on CWRU's Mandel School.

"I was attracted by the possibility of getting the joint degree (MSSA and MNO) because I hope someday to work in a management position," she says.

Nandakumar was awarded the prestigious Mandel Scholarship Award for Leadership in the 2000-01 academic year. For the colloquium presentation that comes with the award, she discussed the results of her independent study on the impact of a program that lends money to groups of women in India's rural villages enabling them to start their own small businesses.

Despite the heavy course load accompanying a dual degree, Nandakumar has found time to work on consulting projects for the Cleveland Film Society and the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency, and sit on the boards of two nonprofits, neither of which is in Ohio. She also gave birth to a son in March.

When not working or caring for her child, she enjoys reading, and is a self-described "computer enthusiast," maintaining Web sites for nonprofit organizations including that of the job training program in India where she formerly volunteered. She also enjoys traveling with her husband.

"So far we've seen 36 of the 50 states. We love road trips," she laughs. Nandakumar hopes eventually to return to India to develop and lead a nonprofit social service program to help develop economically backward youth and women. "That would be my ultimate dream," she says

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