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Tenzin Kunsang

Tenzin Kunsang is a graduate of Cornell University with a BA in biology and society, and a minor in inequality studies on the Health Equity Track. During her time on campus, she was involved in public health and education initiatives with a specific focus on equity, social justice, and cross-cultural dialogue. This included clubs and organizations such as Cornell Center for Health Equity Undergraduate Chapter, College & Career Readiness Initiative, Community Learning and Service Partnership, and the Arts & Sciences Ambassadors Program. She also has experience in communications, having worked as the science editor for her school’s newspaper and as a communications intern at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. As a Gilman Scholar and Laidlaw Scholar, she traveled to Fiji, Nepal, and India during her undergraduate years.

A six-decade-old institution founded in Dharamshala, India, the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) has evolved in tandem with the sociopolitical “Tibet issue” within the India-China-U.S. triangle. As a result, there has been a rise in Himalayan descendants and overseas Tibetan refugees in TCV, but a decrease in Tibetan refugees directly from Tibet. Tenzin’s Fulbright-Nehru project in Dharamshala is particularizing the term “Himalayans” to analyze which regions are experiencing the most outmigration into TCV and why TCV is a more favorable schooling option compared to more proximate schools. Through semi-structured interviews, archival and ethnographic fieldwork, and participant observation, she is also examining how TCV students have become key components in promoting identity formation and kinship networks. On completion of the project, Tenzin plans on transferring the skills she acquired from it to pursuing an MPH at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Ram Mohan

Professor Ram Mohan earned his BSc in chemistry from Hansraj College in Delhi, India, an MSc in organic chemistry from the University of Delhi, India, and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (under Professor Dale Whalen), USA. He did his postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (in Professor Robert Coates’s lab) and started his independent academic career at Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU). He is currently the Wendell and Loretta Hess Professor of Chemistry at IWU.

Professor Mohan’s research, carried out exclusively by undergraduate students, focuses on environmentally friendly organic synthesis using bismuth compounds. To date, he has supervised over 140 IWU undergraduates and published 68 manuscripts co-authored by them. He is especially committed to raising awareness about green chemistry in rural India and often travels to remote parts of India.

He is also the recipient of several awards, such as: the University of Maryland, Baltimore County 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award; the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award; the Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (St. Louis Green Chemistry Team) Green Chemistry Award; Chemist of the Year 2011 (Illinois Heartland Section of the American Chemical Society); the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Environmental Improvement Award for incorporating sustainability into chemistry education; the 2023 Kemp Award for Teaching Excellence (from IWU); and the Fulbright Teacher Scholar Award in 2012, 2019, and 2023.

Smita Guha

Dr. Smita Guha is a tenured and full professor at St. John’s University, NY, in the School of Education. She is also the chairperson of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
She received her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research involves preparing teachers in the areas of math and science education, and in child development.

Dr. Guha has written three books: Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Leaders; Healthy Children; and Teacher as Researcher. Her fourth book, Critical Literacy for Socio-emotional Learning is in the print stage. She has also written several book chapters. Forty-one of her articles have been published in scholarly journals, and she has presented at more than 60 international, national, state and regional conferences.

Dr. Guha is also the founder of an after-school program that demonstrates the collaboration of family, school, and community. She has received several grants and has worked with underprivileged mothers and children living in homeless shelters in the U.S. and India. She is also the recipient of honors such as the Talent Award from New York State Assembly, the New York City Corps Artist Award, and the Outstanding Citizen award from the Council of the City of New York. Further, twice she has received the merit award and the faculty recognition award from St. John’s University.

A vocalist of Indian music, Dr. Guha is the founder and president of the nonprofit organization, Anandasangit.

Culture can impact how children build values, belief systems, thinking, and understanding of themselves as individuals and as members of society. The unique cultural influences that children respond to from birth include customs and beliefs around food and artistic expression. While a healthy diet is associated with overall development and improved cognitive function, so also is early exposure to music which ignites all areas of a child’s faculty. Both help the body and the mind to work together. The purpose of Dr. Guha’s Fulbright-Nehru study is to focus on child development across cultural contexts regarding food and music in India.

Taryn Williams

Ms. Taryn Williams is currently a head teacher and secondary generalist with the Lake and Peninsula School District in remote Alaska. She is a former Fulbright Fellow to Germany and a Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace at Middlebury College. This past summer, she was a WWI Fellow through the National Endowment for the Humanities at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. Ms. Williams also serves as her district’s student government advisor and as treasurer of her local National Education Association.

Ms. Williams got her BS in urban studies (with a focus on urban education) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and her MSEd in elementary education from the same university in 2015; she also earned a certification in K-12 TESOL. Additionally, she completed a certificate through the Strategic Leadership in Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2021.

Her goal for her Fulbright DAST in India is to share and compare knowledge about the best practices in curriculum and assessment design, and learn about Indian culture. She is also teaching people about the unique and beautiful location she calls home: the Alaskan bush.

Tara Seekins

Ms. Tara Seekins teaches English at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California. She has served as a school leader, an English instructor in the college program at San Quentin State Prison, and as a lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. Ms. Seekins has a National Board certificate in English language development and was part of the 2015 Fulbright-Hays delegation that traveled to China. Each of these experiences has reinforced her belief in the transformative power of education as well as intensified her passion for developing culturally relevant curricula, collaborating with colleagues across the globe, and encouraging students to become engaged citizens of the world.

Ms. Seekins holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College, a master’s degree in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and both a master’s degree in education and a law degree from UC Berkeley.

Ms. Seekins’s Fulbright inquiry project is exploring gender representation in contemporary Indian literature and film and has a curriculum guide and instructional unit for secondary English teachers. The guide and instructional unit are focusing on women’s voices in contemporary Indian literature through university coursework and interviews with students and professors; collaborations with Indian educators to support cross-cultural dialogue; and site visits to locations of cultural and literary importance. This will form one of the cornerstones of a newly developed course on world literature that concentrates on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.

Chaya Gopalan

Dr. Chaya Gopalan received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bangalore University, India, and her PhD from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She continued her research as a postdoctoral research fellow at Michigan State University. Her teaching career included a tenure-track faculty member at St. Louis Community College and St. Louis College of Pharmacy before assuming a full professor position at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). She has been teaching anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology at both graduate and undergraduate levels for health professional programs. Dr. Gopalan has been practicing evidence-based teaching using team-based learning, case-based learning, and, most recently, the flipped classroom methods. She has received many teaching awards, including the Arthur C. Guyton Educator of the Year award from the American Physiological Society (APS), Outstanding Two-Year College Teaching award by the National Association of Biology Teachers, and Excellence in Undergraduate Education award by SIUE. She has also received several grants, including an NSF-IUSE, an NSF-STEM Talent Expansion Program, and the APS Teaching Career Enhancement awards. Dr. Gopalan has published numerous manuscripts and case studies and contributed to several textbook chapters and question banks for textbooks and board exams. She is the author of the textbook Biology of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases (Elsevier, 2022) and a frequent workshop facilitator and keynote speaker on teaching and learning in the US and abroad. Besides teaching and research, Dr. Gopalan is very active in the teaching section of the APS, where she currently serves as the Advisory Board Member of the Center for Physiology Education. Besides teaching and research, Dr. Gopalan enjoys mentoring her students and peers.

This Fulbright-Nehru proposal seeks to assess the current teaching practices in a rural college in India and subsequently provide faculty training to incorporate student-centered instructional methods such as flipped teaching in their courses and examine perceptions and intentions of faculty towards using innovative instructional strategies, faculty experiences in designing, implementing, and refining flipped teaching, and student outcomes of flipped classes. The proposed study intends to gain knowledge on student and faculty feedback on flipped instruction in a rural college in India with technological gaps. The potential and mitigating factors in implementing successful flipped teaching will aid in developing successful student-centered classrooms.

Anita Charles

Dr. Anita Charles is Director of Teacher Education and Senior Lecturer at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. In the past, she has taught a wide variety of ages and abilities, from first graders through adult learners, including more than ten years as a high school English teacher.

Dr. Charles has conducted many workshops on a wide range of topics, including autism, special education, digital literacies, and teaching methodologies.

As a Fulbright Scholar in India in 2016, Dr. Charles taught undergraduates and explored issues of literacy and inclusion in pre-K-12 schools. Subsequently, she engaged in research on inclusive education for children with disabilities in India.

Dr. Charles has a PhD from University of New Hampshire in the area of Adolescent Literacy. Her dissertation on digital, social, and academic literacies won two national awards. She holds an MEd from Harvard and a BA from Dartmouth College. She has published numerous articles as well as several book chapters. In 2019, she also appeared on a nationally televised ABC news special with Diane Sawyer entitled “Screentime.”

For her Fulbright-Nehru grant, Dr. Charles plans to present on topics related to teacher education, literacy, inclusion and diversity, and/or similar areas of expertise. Her philosophy is based in progressive theory, which promotes a student’s learning process as one of teacher-student interaction, discovery, and growth, through a recognition of social and cultural contexts. In India, a number of initiatives strive to improve educational opportunities, processes, and outcomes for all children. In addition to teaching, she hopes to assist a host institution in curriculum/program development, participate in meetings as an active member of the organization, engage in local community outreach, and give presentations or workshops.

Sharolyn Pollard-Durodola

Dr. Sharolyn Pollard-Durodola is a Professor in the English Language Learning program in the Department of Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education, in the College of Education at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She received a BA degree in Romance Languages from Mount Holyoke College, a MAT from Columbia-Teachers College, an MS in Developmental and Remedial Reading from City College of New York, and an EdD in Curriculum and Development with an emphasis in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Houston. Her scholarship attends to the language and literacy development of multilingual students. Central to her scholarship is developing school-based interventions, evaluating their impact on the language and conceptual knowledge development of PK-3 multilingual learners and investigating how to improve the quality of language practices that are embedded in subject area instruction (e.g., science, social studies). She has been the co-principal investigator on two IES grants titled Words of Oral Reading and Language Development, focusing on preschool language/literacy development and is the co-principal investigator for Project E3: Enhancing, Engaging, and Empowering Teachers for the Next Generation of English Learners funded by The Office of English Language Acquisition (OLEA), National Professional Development Program. She was also the Senior Researcher (Nevada) for the multi-site Project International Consortium for Multilingual Excellence in Education (ICMEE), also a National Professional Development Grant funded by OELA. These OELA grants focus on supporting general education teachers of multilingual learners via professional development approaches (e.g., eLearning, Saturday Advanced Professional Learning Institutes, My Teaching Partner coaching) with attention to the influence of teacher beliefs and attitudes on their instructional practices. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Early Education and Development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, The Elementary School Journal, Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, The Reading Teacher, and Bilingual Research Journal.

In 2019, Dr. Pollard-Durodola traveled through India, noting its multilingual presence, which inspired her to consider how Indian teachers are able to promote multilingual learning during the early primary school years in a country where many languages, mother tongues, and dialects are spoken. She investigates how beliefs (teachers, school administrators, parents) about multilingualism (e.g., learning English, Hindi, Mother Tongue) may influence the implementation of India’s Three Language Model priorities and how the history of India’s language education policies may provide insights about current tensions. This Fulbright-Nehru projects seeks to provide insights about the factors that contribute to or hinder early childhood multilingualism in similar global settings where immigration patterns challenge educational systems to promote linguistic equity.