UTIA soil scientist receives Women in Science National Mentoring Award

Former mentees nominated Sindhu Jagadamma for honor

2025-11-11

(Press-News.org) As a mentor, Sindhu Jagadamma, associate professor of soil science at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, helps her students increase their self-confidence and push themselves to persevere through adversity, traits she learned to improve in herself as a young girl from a small town in India.

Former mentees who worked with Jagadamma in the Sustainable Soil Management Lab nominated her for the Women in Science Mentoring Award, given by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America. She received the award at the three societies’ annual conference (CANVAS 2025), held November 9-12 in Salt Lake City.

The Women in Science Mentoring Award recognizes an individual whose efforts have encouraged women or girls in the sciences. Mentoring efforts may be demonstrated by such things as the number of women mentored in academic, government or industry positions; assisting students in presenting and publishing their work, finding financial aid and providing career guidance; providing psychological support, encouragement and strategies for maintaining work-life balance for early-career professionals in agronomy, crops, soils, and environmental sciences; and continued interest in the individual professional advancement of women scientists.

“Among the many responsibilities of a faculty member, mentoring, particularly of female and minority students, gives me the most excitement and satisfaction. Growing up as a girl child of illiterate parents from a remote village in India, I firmly believe that mentoring support is critical for women. I shape my mentoring approaches mostly from my personal experiences, as I deeply understand the barriers many women face in their personal and professional lives,” Jagadamma said.

Jagadamma, who studies ways to mitigate soil and environmental problems associated with conventional farm management practices, also won the Soil and Water Conservation Society’s 2025 Conservation Research Award, another national recognition that was presented in August. Ten years after earning her bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences from Kerala Agricultural University in India, Jagadamma came to the United States to begin her graduate studies. While married and having a child, she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from The Ohio State University. She came to Tennessee as a postdoctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2010 and then moved to University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s College of Engineering as a postdoctoral researcher in 2014. In 2016, she joined UTIA as an assistant professor.

Two former postdoc researchers, Sutie Xu and Patricia Lazicki, as well as Shikha Singh, a Ph.D. student in her lab, nominated Jagadamma for the award. They praised her for her support and encouragement both professionally and personally. Xu, now an assistant professor at the University of California at Davis, recalled how Jagadamma supported her while she cared for a newborn and then through the pandemic. Lazicki, vegetable crops advisor for the University of California cooperative Extension, said she was impressed by Jagadamma’s interest in her career goals and how Jagadamma could help. Singh, research assistant professor at Washington State University, said Jagadamma encouraged her to return to her home country for her wedding and then helped her with presentations and manuscripts to become a better researcher and communicator.

“Dr. Jagadamma is a perfect combination of competence, kindness and caring. She made a lasting impact on all of us, and there is no doubt she will continue to have a positive impact on many more women scientists in soil, plant, and environmental science,” the former mentees wrote in their nomination letter.

For more information about the Sustainable Soil Management Lab, refer to jagadammalab.tennessee.edu.

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is comprised of the Herbert College of Agriculture, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch and UT Extension. Through its land-grant mission of teaching, research and outreach, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans and beyond. utia.tennessee.edu.

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