Editor Artika Rangan Casini and her Blue Hen parents, Ravi and Rashmi Rangan

The University of Delaware brought the Rangans to America. Artika Rangan Casini, pictured in 1984 and 2022 with her parents, Ravi and Rashmi Rangan, serves as editor of the UD Magazine. Art by Molly Chappell.

It's a small world, after all

A letter from the foreign-born editor of UD Magazine—and a proud Blue Hen

Artika Rangan Casini, AS05 March 29, 2023

There are some things that stand the test of time. Global education is one of them.

One hundred years ago, a 28-year-old Army veteran named Raymond Kirkbride had an idea: Expose young people to the world, he thought, and maybe you can change the world.

It did. He did. If you’re among the millions of people to have ever studied abroad, you have the late UD professor to thank.

I have my parents. My father was a chief engineer in the Indian Merchant Marine who sailed the world and named me after his first love, the ocean. My mother was a fearless woman whose dreams of stability, security, opportunity and prosperity brought our family to this country.

"Artika, like Antarctica," I tell people who can't pronounce my name, but I should really say, "Artika, like the Arctic Ocean."

My parents arrived in America, as many immigrants do, on student visas. In Delaware, they found new purpose. My dad, Chakravarthi Ravi Rangan, EOE90M, ENG00M, worked for 29 years as an environmental engineer, monitoring Delaware City’s oil refineries and implementing controls to reduce harmful airborne contaminants like sulfur dioxide, which dropped from 140 parts per billion to near-zero, thanks to his efforts.

My mom, Rashmi Rangan, BSPA93M, runs the Delaware Community Reinvestment Action Council, a nonprofit dedicated to fair housing, fair lending and economic justice. When an attorney once chided her for helping a client with a legal problem, she immediately enrolled in law school, earning her J.D. while working and parenting full time.

My parents taught me how to be a global citizen right here in Delaware. They taught me to love this world and the people in it, and to do my small part to make it better. I try. In the UD Magazine, our entire team has the great honor of sharing the stories of those who do, Blue Hens who transform their “small part” into a lasting legacy of positive impact.

My mom at her 2001 law school graduation.

One such story comes from President Dennis Assanis, who has navigated UD through a global pandemic while leading the University’s largest and most transformative fundraising campaign to date. As it turns out, he also hails from abroad (Athens, Greece) and has sailed the world with a father in the Merchant Marine (his was a captain). The fact that we both landed in Newark, Delaware, of all places, reminds me that it’s a small world, after all.

But maybe it takes a small state to understand a small world; to know implicitly that we’re all connected, with something to share, something to give and something deeply profound to learn from each other.

Professor Kirkbride knew this well. Expose young people to the world around them, he realized, and their world will change. Almost inevitably for the better.