Meet Our India Fulbrighters Archive - Page 10 of 43

A. Madhu Babu

Mr. Madhu Babu is a teacher and trainer of the English language at the Z.P. High School, Brahmanatarla, Andhra Pradesh and an e-content developer for the State Council for Education Research and Training, Andhra Pradesh (APSCERT). In his extensive teaching experience of 27 years, he has developed several classroom videos and conducted workshops on career guidance, life skills, and communication skills for students and teachers. His classroom practices are fun-filled, student-friendly, and designed to help students tackle real-world challenges. In recognition of his role in improving communication skills among children from rural areas in India, Mr. Babu received the National Best Teacher Award in 2020. He has a master’s in English and a bachelor’s in education. He also has a diploma in ELT from the Regional Institute of English, Bengaluru.

Through his participation in the prestigious Fulbright TEA program, Mr. Babu is exploring the role of teaching strategies in promoting employability skills among students. Upon his return to India at the end of the program, he hopes to share the insights gained during his stay in the U.S. with his students and colleagues.

Satya Sundar Sethy

Dr. Satya Sundar Sethy is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He has served at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) as Assistant Professor in the Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE), New Delhi. He is the recipient of the prestigious Young Philosopher Award 2017, conferred by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Ministry of Education, Government of India. He has published several papers in prestigious journals and contributed chapters to the edited books. His publications include the books Introduction to Logic and Logical Discourse (2021), Higher Education and Professional Ethics: Roles and Responsibilities of Teachers (edited, 2018), Assessment of Learner Performance (With Mishra, S., 2018), Meaning and Language (2016), Contemporary Ethical Issues in Engineering (edited, 2015), and Indian Philosophy: Orthodox Systems (2010). His current research interests are consciousness studies; Aristotelian logic; analytic philosophy; Indian philosophy; professional ethics, especially academic ethics and engineering ethics; engineering education; and assessment and evaluation in higher education.

During his Fulbright grant, Dr. Sethy is engaged with teaching, research, and public lecture activities at the host institution and several universities in Utah, USA. He is involved in Philosophy course curriculum design and teaching a few courses to Humanities students. He is delivering guest lectures on ‘Engineering Ethics’ and ‘Engineering Education’ issues to engineering and science students, special lectures on ‘Academic Ethics’, and ‘Assessment and Evaluation Practices in Higher Education’ in the teacher training program, and a few public lectures on ‘Role and Responsibilities of Higher Education Teachers in Contemporary Times’, and ‘Oriental Philosophy and Engineering in India’.

Monica Singhania

Monica Singhania is Professor of Accounting & Sustainability at Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi in India. She is a graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), post-graduate from Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi, India and a Fellow Member (FCA) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. She has the distinction of securing All India Merit Rank 22nd in chartered accountancy examinations. She has been awarded Ph.D. in accounting & corporate finance from the University of Delhi. She is the author of many books and several research papers published in leading international journals.

With over 24 years of teaching and research experience, Monica has written more than 20 international business cases and has spoken at over 150 national and international conferences, workshop, symposiums, faculty development programs and corporate training events. She teaches accounting and sustainability to MBA students at FMS. Her current research interests include accounting, finance, and sustainability. She can be reached at monica@fms.edu

During her Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence grant, Dr. Singhania is teaching Managerial Accounting to MBA students at Carolina University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA in fall term of 2022-23 academic year. Additionally, she will also be associated with host institution’s business school faculty to enable sustained exchange of academic and research ideas. Monica will deliver invited sessions at several institutions and engage in community driven initiatives as well.

Vandana Saxena

Dr. vandana saxena is an evolving academician in the field of Diversity and Inclusion for the last three decades. She is a Professor of Education at CIE, Delhi University. She taught for four years in a school as a science teacher before joining CIE in November 1997. In her academic persuasion to cultivate a democratic educational environment, she is engaged with teaching, training, research & consultations focusing upon developing research-based thought-provoking pedagogical designs addressing issues of Diversity and Inclusion across all ages. She has worked on multiple projects & assignments with MHRD (India), World Bank, UGC, NCERT, NCTE, NIOS, RCI, and several civil society initiatives. She has addressed and written in, many national and international forums. Her prime contemplation is on Conceptualizing Research in Education, Driving Research Questions, Academic Writing, and Ethics in Research, for which she is conducting workshops with researchers in various universities at the Pan-India level.

She has been diligently promoting the case of equal opportunities for all, symbolized by the conscious use of lowercasing for the writing of her name.

As an essential part of the Fulbright grant, Dr. saxena will be designing the course curriculum and teaching in the Departments of Education at Mississippi Valley State University (MS). She will be engaged in field visits and community outreach programs. Along with academic persuasions, she plans to create opportunities for cultural exchange with students and faculty members of MVSU. Placed at the center of the civil rights movement, she is hopeful of developing deeper theoretical insights furthering the process of conceptualizing perspectives in diversity and inclusion.

Geeta Nair

Dr. Geeta Nair is Professor and Head of Department of Business Economics at H. R. College of Commerce & Economics for over 3 decades. She is also Director of Research Initiatives, Chair of Board of Studies in Business Economics, HSNC University, and member of Board of Studies in Business Economics at University of Mumbai. She is the Centre Head of PhD Centre in Business Economics and has successfully guided 5 students, with 7 new students registered under her.

She has been awarded 5 Minor Research Projects of the University of Mumbai, 1 Major Research Project of the UGC, 2 Post-doctoral Indo-French collaborative research projects jointly by FMSH, Paris and the ICSSR & UGC, Delhi. She has been invited to several prestigious international conferences at the London School of Economics, UNESCO, SUNY-Cortland, Salzburg Resilience & Decent Work Conference; and has over 100 reputed publications with 4 books published by Palgrave Macmillan, UK. She is also listed in the ‘Marquis Who’s Who’ list in Economics.

During her Scholar-in-Residence Program Fulbright Fellowship for 4 months at New Jersey City University, she will start a new course on the Indian Economy and enrich the existing Economics syllabi by covering the developing country’s perspective. She will also conduct research in the area of “Cost-Benefit Analysis of Online Learning in Higher Education in the US- Learning Lessons for India”.

Kalpana Hulluru

Dr. Kalpana Hulluru is a Professor in the Department of English, Pondicherry University (PU), Puducherry, India. She strongly believes that literature provides critical thinking skills that will help students/scholars to live life meaningfully. Her strengths are strategic approaches to teaching mixed groups of students and innovative teaching methods. She has successfully completed three research projects with an ongoing SPARC project. She has many awards and fellowships to her credit. A few notable ones are the USA’s ‘Study of Institutions Award’ (2007) and the SICI’s ‘Faculty Mobility Grant’ (2016). She was an invited keynote speaker for the Open National Science Day (2018) at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. She has to her credit several publications and has contributed a chapter on the Tamil language Classic, Silappadikaram to A Companion to World Literature (Wiley, 2019). She is an able research guide and is recognized as an outstanding teacher at her institution.

At Metropolitan State University, Denver, CO, Kalpana, besides teaching upper-division Literature courses, would offer courses on Women’s Writing and Feminism that would be cross-listed with the university’s Gender Institute. As part of the outreach, she would be delivering the annual Gandhi Memorial Lecture sponsored by Denver Sister Cities International and also interact with high school students at the Denver Centre for International Studies. Further to teaching and outreach programs, she intends to research Asian American Children’s literature concerning gender. By the end of her stay, she hopes to develop an MoU between the universities to link online courses, foster student-scholar exchanges and initiate collaborative research.

Aadil Zeffer Sofi

Mr. Aadil Zeffer is a PhD candidate in English at Lovely Professional University, a private university in Jalandhar in the state of Punjab. He has two master’s degrees — in English from Central University of Kashmir and in Urdu from Maulana Azad National Urdu University. He was an English trainer for three years at a technical and vocational college in Saudi Arabia. He earned Cambridge certified CELTA and took courses in learning Spanish, Italian, and French.

Mr. Zeffer is an author of a book An Educational Supplement. His second book Convergence, which will be published soon focuses on uniting our collective spirit. He is also working on a book on Postmodern Gothic which is his thrust area. He has published several research papers in international as well as UGC care-listed journals.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, he will use innovative teaching methods aiming to improve the linguistic ability of foreign language learners and this endeavor in turn, will enrich his pedagogical skills. He believes that the Fulbright FLTA program provides a wonderful platform for teaching learning experience and cultural exchange. He plans to use this Fulbright experience in his future academic and teaching assignments.

Harshita Srivastava

Ms. Harshita Srivastava is an independent scholar from Kolkata. She completed her master’s in English in 2021 from St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata and received the Britto Gold Medal for securing the first rank at the university. She has also received a Junior Research Fellowship. In her undergraduate years at Loreto College, she received the Madhumita Mitra Memorial Award for responsibility and sincerity; Nirmal Sharma Memorial Award for securing the highest marks in Hindi; Bibhas Roy Award for overall excellence; and certificates for proficiency in political science, French and Hindi. She has served as the Secretary of the Literary Society both at her undergraduate and graduate institutions; and has been on the editorial board of the college/university magazines.

Ms. Srivastava has authored a volume of poems titled ‘Corona Diary, Before and Beyond’ published by Writers Workshop. She has translated a volume of Hindi poems to English titled ‘Wheel of Creation’ authored by Dr. Rakhi Roy Halder. Her research interests mainly include the Divine Feminine in Hinduism and partition literature. She has presented and published research papers on these topics.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Srivastava is teaching Hindi at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She aims to make the experience of her students as meaningful as possible by highlighting the cultural nuances as an integral element of the language learning process. In addition, she hopes to imbibe the teaching pedagogy of the U.S. so that new ideas may be formed and used in her teaching career.

Reetika Negi

Dr. Reetika Negi is an independent researcher and has a keen interest in the role of language in education and knowledge building, preservation, and dissemination. Currently, she is researching on the status of the regional languages like Kumaoni and Garhwali at the school level and in higher education.

She has completed her PhD and master’s in linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She received UGC NET-JRF scholarship in linguistics from 2015 to 2020. Her PhD thesis focused on aspects of representation, identity, and agency of Kumaoni women in folklore and literary/oral traditions of the region. It explored the relation between language and gender and presented a sociolinguistic assessment of women’s linguistic/cultural practices and traditional knowledge systems.

As a teaching assistant at the Centre for Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, she taught an introductory course on linguistics to undergraduate students. She has worked as a linguist with Panlingua Language Processing LLP on audio transcription and corpus building on Kumaoni and Hindi languages. She is also an active member of Linguistic Society of India and the Society for Endangered Languages, India.

As a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant, Dr. Negi will teach Hindi at Brown University. She is keen on getting a hands-on experience of the higher education system in the U.S. and learn more about American culture. At the same time, she wishes to teach students more about the nuances of Hindi, India’s linguistic and cultural diversity and work towards expanding her scholarship and teaching skills.