Nan Wu Hultgren, PhD, and graduate alumna of UC Irvine, along with her husband, Eric Hultgren, PhD, named the first space in campus graduate housing.
Nan Wu Hultgren and her husband, Eric Hultgren, both PhDs, have formed strong and beautiful connection with UC Irvine. Nan earned her Doctorate of Philosophy in cellular and molecular biology from UC Irvine in 2018. While she was studying in Irvine, her and Eric both lived in campus grad housing for five years. They even had their first child during that five-year span. As a result of their experiences on campus, both Nan and Eric felt compelled to help current and future graduate students, including funding for childcare and other resources so that they may attend professional and academic conferences.
What compelled you to give back UC Irvine graduate and postdoctoral scholars?
Nan: We wanted to start an endowment to support student parents, especially graduate and postdocs or even earlier career scientists that are starting a family and child caring. We wanted to provide funding for parents to still be able to afford to go to conferences. I had my first child as a third-year grad student and the average age is increasing for grad students. Many people want to start a family or they are in the age range where this is happening. But, of course, there are a lot of challenges. It’s definitely not a traditional route many people take. Just from my personal experience, I felt like it would be nice to have more support both financially and having a community. Including accommodations and resources both personnel resources or facility-based resources. So that’s kind of why we wanted to wanted to do this.
And specifically naming the study room, we just liked the idea of having a quiet place for these grad students, parents or not, to be able to step away and be able to focus on whatever they wanted. Whether they want to finish their dissertation, prepare a publication or getting in a meeting where they’re not disturbed.
Eric: I could not improve on what Nan already said but I will add that one of my intentions in giving back is due to the fact that I was a beneficiary of financial aid when I was a student and I want to pay that forward.
Why have you stayed so connected to UC Irvine and the Graduate Division as an alumna?
Nan: I just had an amazing experience as a graduate student at UC Irvine. I highly recommend it to anybody. I feel like, even though UCI might not be a big name like Stanford, Eric is actually a PhD from Stanford, and both of us have friends that are PhD from many other places, and it just seems to me that you UC Irvine is so dedicated to their students. They’re so student-centered and they try to do everything they can to help. They really care about student experience they’re not just using them as cheap laborers; they’re really want to nurture and support them for their own future development. I don’t think some of these big-name schools can say that, not even close. That’s why I really wanted to be part of this community, to help UCI continue to support all the current and future students in whatever aspects I can.
As I said, we had our first child when we were there. We took dance lessons there and that is how we found the instructor that coached us for our first dance at our wedding. We took our engagement photos in Aldrich Park. It’s a beautiful place with such great amenities both on campus and nearby off campus. Being a student, all the support that is available, that’s why we love the place.
Eric: The campus housing was really nice. As an affiliate, I also had access to the same amenities. I loved the Anteater Rec Center, it was fantastic. Probably my biggest regret from that time was not going there more (laughing). I missed it as soon as we left campus housing.
“I just had an amazing experience as a graduate student at UC Irvine. I highly recommend it to anybody.” – Nan Wu Hultgren
How involved are you in the UC Irvine community?
I’m the Chapter President at ARCS Orange County and we work very closely with the Graduate Division.
I am on the Dean’s External Stakeholder Committee. I’ve been in this group of mostly alumni that try to support graduate students and UC Irvine as a whole.
One thing that is relatively new, is that I’m working with Dr. Feizal Waffarn and Dr. Adria Imada with the Pathway to the Professoriate initiative. We’ve been starting to do two things that we’ve been talking about, one, is to potentially use the ARCS Scholar maybe as part of the ambassador program to help with recruitment. The the other aspect was to use our ARCS platform as a way to let people know about the CSU Pre-Professor Program (UCI-PREPP) and California Community College Internship Program (CCCIP) programs that we are promoting. We just want as many people as possible to know about them and reap the benefits.
Also, I’ve been wanting to start this community and wanting to organize a weekly or biweekly get-together of all the student parents, just to exchange ideas and resources. I remember how I felt then and I how still feel now sometimes, when I just wanted to vent to somebody who would understand all the difficulties I’m going through. Or it would even be an opportunity to share with this group what resources the university has so that what might be an issue can be fixed with campus resources they may have been unaware of. I’m hoping that Interim Dean Jaymi Smith and I, with the information we get from this endowment fund, can form this community and add another level of support for each other
