An MIT professor is being celebrated for extending a sweet gesture to a hardworking student who has a 10-month-old.
This past week, Professor Troy Littleton shared a photo to social media of his “new and improved” lab for his grad student, Karen Cunningham.
Little runs a research lab and wanted to accommodate one of his students, Cunningham, who has a little girl.
Amidst the lab equipment and computers, Littleton decided to place a travel crib in the lab so Cunningham could bring her daughter Katie to work.
“It’s always a challenge [being a parent while in graduate school] so anything you can do in a lab to facilitate and help out, we try,” he shared with Good Morning America.
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Under normal circumstances, Littleton and other members of the lab would’ve thrown Cunningham a baby shower. But due to the current global health crisis, he was forced to give her her gift a little late…
“This was sort of the lab gift for Karen, 10 months later,” he said. The photo quickly went viral on Twitter.
And on the first day back in the lab for Cunningham, Littleton showed off her new lab equipment.
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“My favorite new equipment purchase for the lab – a travel crib to go in my office so my graduate student can bring her 9-month old little girl to work when necessary and I get to play with her while her mom gets some work done. Win-win!!” he wrote on May 7.
Following all the love, the professor posted once again to Twitter, reminding the interwebs it was the mom-student who should be praised!
“Well that little tweet blew up?!? However, I wish people were able to spot the real hero here. It’s the graduate student mom, not me. She’s amazing to do all she has to with her daughter and still keep up her thesis project research. Happy Mother’s Day to all – they deserve it!”