If over the summer you ventured up Harvard Street, north of Archives Coffee House, you might see Manna Khan, ’17, ’19, tending UND’s newest crop.
The result of an effort led by Manna and fellow students and faculty, the two-plot campus garden has turned a demolition site into a place to grow, learn and share.
Meanwhile, at her home, wired into one of the most technologically advanced agencies on the planet, Manna is sowing seeds of a different kind.
She is a McNair Scholar who’s earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography at UND, and she’s well on her way to a doctoral degree in Earth System Science & Policy (ESSP).
This summer Manna was selected for a virtual internship at NASA, working and interacting via computer with some of the world’s top experts in her field. Not bad for a nontraditional student who grew up in Bangladesh and struggled with English when she first enrolled at UND. “I appreciate all your help and support throughout my academic journey,” Manna wrote in a thank-you note to her UND colleagues.
“I started with very little English with Dr. (Paul) Todhunter’s class. It has been quite a lot of experiences as a non-traditional, bi-lingual, and first-generation immigrant. As a slow learner, I had to translate every word from Bengali to English and from English to Bengali. “Every day, I am still learning from you. Thank you!”
The campus garden effort and her recent inroads at NASA are driven by Manna’s sense of social and ecological stewardship. Her long-term goal is simply stated: “I have to do something for the world, for the next generation. I want to leave something for my children.”
Besides using her green thumb in Grand Forks, Manna is working with NASA’s History Division, using the agency’s database of satellite and ground measurements to study tropical cyclones, coastal flooding, and related hazards in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia.
“As a dual citizen, I feel for both of my countries,” Manna said. “But what I’m learning from UND, and now from NASA, are skills and knowledge that I want to implement globally, especially in developing countries where people are suffering from the effects of climate issues.”
From Bangladesh to Grand Forks
Manna’s journey at UND began shortly after she and her family moved to Grand Forks from California. She and her husband, Shafiqul, had operated a business after emigrating from Bangladesh 25 years ago, but thought North Dakota would be a better place to raise their son, Ahad, and daughter, Newzaira, as well as advance themselves. “We had experience, but we didn’t have degrees,” Manna said. “So, when we decided to close and move, we wanted to go somewhere better for our children that also had affordable opportunities for education.”
For a time, Manna, her husband and daughter were all enrolled at UND in different fields. Shafiqul is soon to finish a Ph.D. in the College of Education & Human Development. Newzaira graduated with a degree in psychology and has since moved to the East Coast to pursue a Ph.D. of her own.
At UND, Manna has tried to make the most of her opportunities. Perhaps the most pivotal was the McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program – a program designed to prepare first-generation college students for postgraduate studies through research experiences and scholarly activity.
Through the mentoring and support of the McNair Program under Instructor Christopher Atkinson, UND’s Geography Department became a second family for Manna as she works toward her upcoming dissertation that will examine the effects of mitigating the Red River following the flood of 1997. Atkinson noted that her McNair-tied research spanned from Bangladesh to the Red River Valley.
“She researched topics including recycling, trash and tipping fees as well as water and water pollution in Bangladesh, and increasing temperatures in North Dakota,” Atkinson said. “She represented UND well at many regional and national geography conferences.”