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Geology Major Receives Scholarship Senior geology major Frances Alvarado is the recipient of the inaugural Mrs. Parvathammal Endowed Scholarship. The Parvathammal Endowed Scholarship was established by UTSA Professor Emeritus B.S. Thyagarajan in honor of his late mother. He announced the scholarship on Mother's Day 2000. In a letter of congratulations to Alvarado, Thyagarajan remembered his mother as a "great lady who sacrificed much" for those around her. "Born at the beginning of the 20th Century to a poor family of high learning and culture, my mother was largely self-educated, particularly in handicrafts and music and cared for both me and my sister when our father was imprisoned with Mahatma Gandhi during India's fight for freedom," wrote Thyagarajan. "She worked with my father in trying to uplift the poor villagers in South India, and during all those years, wore nothing but clothing she made from yarn that she had spun." Thyagarajan, a world-renowned chemist and founder of the UTSA Division of Earth and Physical Sciences, also explained his reasons for choosing geology as the discipline targeted for this scholarship. "In the ancient language of India, Sanskrit, the word jiya--which is the same as "geo"-- means earth. And since earth is the mother of all human beings, from which we arise and into which we merge at the end of our lives, I feel geology is an appropriate choice for honoring a mother." This is the second scholarship endowed at UTSA by Thyagarajan, who upon his retirement in December 1999 was named the first professor emeritus from the College of Sciences and Engineering. An international symposium, "Recent Developments in Heterocyclic Chemistry," will be held this October in San Antonio honoring Thyagarajan. For more information on the conference, contact George Negrete at 458-5448.
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Alvarado
will complete her degree this summer by taking Geology Field Camp, a
six-week course involving mapping in remote mountain locations. She
hopes to pursue a graduate degree, but before that, may try a year in
the Peace Corps.