Architecture student receives AAUW Fellowship


LAWRENCE — Sharmin Kader, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Architecture, was recently awarded an International Fellowship by the American Association of University Women. The $20,000 grant will support her research activities at KU for one year.

Kader is developing a post-occupancy evaluation tool for use in hospice facilities. Called the Hospice Environment Assessment Protocol, it will provide a standardized method for measuring environmental quality to support end-of-life care for dying patients and their families.

“This tool will provide architects the information about the effectiveness or the weaknesses of their design decisions and also provide guidelines for evidence-based design,” she said. “It will also help hospice organizations assess the quality of the patient-centered care and facility management.”

Kader is studying health care architecture in the architecture department's Health and Wellness Program. She is minoring in environmental gerontology.

Last year she received the Arthur Tuttle Jr. Graduate Fellowship in Health Facility Planning and Design from the American Institute of Architects' Academy of Healthcare Architecture.

Earlier this year she was one of eight KU researchers to present her work to Gov. Sam Brownback and legislators during the Capitol Research Summit in Topeka, and she has won a 2014 Graduate Research Competition award from the KU Office of Research.

She earned a master’s degree in construction science and a certificate in health systems and design at Texas A&M University. She earned her bachelor's degree in architecture from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in addition to practicing architecture professionally in Bangladesh and the United States.

The American Association of University Women has awarded 3,300 International Fellowships since 1917. They are given for full-time study or research in the U.S. to women who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Both graduate and postgraduate studies at accredited U.S. institutions are supported.

In recent years two others from the Department of Architecture have won AAUW fellowships. They are Farhana Ferdous, lecturer in architecture, and doctoral candidate Namya Khan. They received their awards in 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Tue, 04/22/2014

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Charles Linn

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