Leaving Our Legacy

You could ask Srishti Gupta '97 about her term as co-president of the South Asian Association (SAA).

Or you could ask her about the time she spent working on the nearly 300-page ethnic studies report as a member of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations' Academic Affairs Committee (AAC).

Or about her four years working in a molecular biology laboratory at Harvard Medical School.

Or even about her selection as one of Glamour Magazine's Top Ten College Women of 1996.

But the question that was burning in this writer's mind was:

Did you ever get any sleep?

"I guess I don't really sleep very much," Gupta says with a chuckle. "I guess that's where I get all of my hours from."

Even by Harvard standards, Gupta's four years have been full of activity, both in and out of the classroom.

What is most striking about all of her activities is how all of them are, in some way, devoted to fostering better and stronger communities, whether among her fellow SAA members, among minorities on campus or even among her fellow biology concentrators.

In many ways, Gupta's experience at Harvard has been what outsiders to the University might consider to be the quintessential Harvard experience. Her growth in intellectual breadth and her discovery of new subjects and fields as an undergraduate are as remarkable as her more tangible accomplishments.

She did not come to campus intent on being active in the SAA. Nor did she plan to be a mover-and-shaker in the ethnic studies debate. Her first forays into extracurricular life were in the Mozart Society Orchestra, where she was a violist, and the ATA Taekwondo Club. Both were continuations of activities she pursued in high school.

"I started very differently freshman year, mostly concentrating on musical things," Gupta says. "Around sophomore year, I became more involved in the South Asian community on campus. I realized the importance of culture, and became really in touch with my South Asian culture. I discovered South Asia for myself, and my activities became more culturally-based."

Her involvement with the SAA came directly from her desire to foster a large South Asian community on campus. When she arrived on campus in 1993, the organization was small, consisting of only a few groups of friends.

Gupta started out with a limited involvement in the SAA and rose to the position of SAA liaison to the AAC, where she first tackled the issue of ethnic studies.

But after spending some time working in the organization, Gupta says she began to feel that SAA needed a change.

"I decided that there's a lot that the SAA can offer," Gupta says. "It was really important to me to make it more accessible to everybody, not just a core group of people. There are so many South Asians on the campus. They should all feel like the SAA is equally accessible to them."

Spurred to action, Gupta ran for co-president of SAA at the end of her sophomore year on a ticket with Vikaas S. Sohal '97. The two won and immediately introduced some changes to the SAA.

The group's range of activities expanded to include not only Ghungroo, SAA's yearly dance and cultural show, but also readings, discussion tables, social events, and inter-ethnic events.

Sohal cites Gupta's work on Ghungroo as an example of her devotion to an open, welcoming community. Some of the most important dances in the show are the group dances, in which teams of dancers train together for weeks in preparation for the show. These dances are important for the organization because, Sohal says, students get to know each other in addition to learning about culture.

"[Gupta] went to great lengths to be sure everyone was put in a dance and that every dance had a broad distribution of people both in terms of talent and the class years of the people in the dances," Sohal says. "That's one example of the attitude that she brought to the organization for which I admire her."

Gupta and Sohal's efforts to expand SAA's membership were extremely successful, according to current SAA Secretary Sushant Srinivasan '98.

Part of the reason I ran for secretary was because I felt so comfortable after going to the events for one year," he says. "They had a diverse array of events, and I felt I could go to the ones I was interested in."

Gupta was also instrumental in reaching out to and co-sponsoring events with other minority organizations on campus, such as the Asian American Association, the Philippine Forum, and the Harvard Foundation.

But Gupta didn't just preach openness; she exuded it. When Nikhil Chandra '99 suffered a flood in his room, which destroyed all of his textbooks and notes just before exam period last year, Gupta came to the rescue. She organized a "Help Nick" campaign among SAA members to get him copies of notes and textbooks so that he could study.

"She stopped me in the Science Center and offered to help me out," Chandra says. "I'd never really had a conversation with her before, but she just flagged me down in the Science Center."

It was, quite simply, Srishti being Srishti.

Gupta always emphasized the little things that made people feel welcome. She would help members with problem sets. She would give medical school advice to fellow aspiring doctors among the membership. She took it upon herself to do what it took to make the SAA not just a small cultural organization but a genuine support network and social center for the South Asian community on campus.

Ethnic Studies

Her devotion and passion for cultural activities did not stop at the SAA.

Gupta served as the vice-chair of the AAC during her junior year. Having discovered the importance of culture for herself, she characteristically wanted to share her enthusiasm with others. As a result, she immersed herself in the ethnic studies debate and was instrumental in the production of the AAC's ethnic studies report two years ago.

She and her AAC colleagues worked closely with Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, as well as Professors of Afro-American Studies Cornel R. West '74 and K. Anthony Appiah, to increase the number of ethnic studies courses in the curriculum.

"In the popular elections for the Undergraduate Council, 'ethnic studies' was like a buzzword," Gupta says. "I saw a big jump in terms of campus awareness of ethnic studies, and that was a great start."

But what Gupta found perhaps most rewarding was what she learned about the Harvard administration and how it attempts to improve the curriculum.

"Working on it was really good because I learned a lot about the big names on campus, about ethnic studies as a discipline, and Harvard's philosophy on education," she says.

Scientific Pursuits

The South Asian community and the ethnic studies debate were not Gupta's only circles of devoted activity.

Her interest in living things dates back to the ninth grade, and since then she has done significant research work in microbial survival, starting in high school and continuing throughout her undergraduate years.

As a member of the scientific community, she wanted to combine her social awareness with her love of science. Just as with the SAA and the AAC, Gupta was interested in more than just the subject material itself. She enthusiastically wanted to share her passion with others.

"I fell in love with science because I had a really great teacher in high school, and I just wanted to share that with somebody else," Gupta says.

To that end, she joined the Experimentors program her first year, which at the time was a program devoted to teaching science classes solely in local elementary schools.

But Gupta soon realized that to maintain students' interest in science, they needed to be targeted in high school. So she and Moupali Das '96 began the high school division of Experimentors. Harvard students would prepare lesson plans on various scientific subjects and then teach the lessons at the local high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin.

"A lot of the kids at Cambridge Rindge and Latin were minorities, so it was a good way to bridge my cultural and scientific interests," Gupta says.

As she had at the SAA, Gupta was able to take subjects that might seem dry at first pass and make them come alive. The students genuinely responded.

"The nephew of my Expos preceptor, David Gewanter, was a student at Cambridge and Latin, whom my preceptor said wasn't very interested in his studies," Gupta says. "One night, he came home from school and told my preceptor, 'I learned this really cool thing in school today,' and it was one of the lessons that I taught."

"Kids were excited. We would walk out of classrooms and people would say, 'That's cool how that happens,'" Gupta says. "It's always great to see someone excited about science, especially when you are so excited about it yourself."

In addition to being an excellent teacher, Gupta proved to be a strong leader for the Experimentors program.

"She was really together and accessible at the same time," says current Experimentors head Jennifer Lin '98. "They really made things smooth for us for our first year."

Gupta's experiences sharing her love of biology were broadened this past academic year, when she served as a course assistant for Biological Sciences 2: "Organismic and Evolutionary Biology."

BS2 course assistants, according to Gupta's fellow course assistant Carrie L. Zinaman '97, who is a Crimson editor, generally serve as something of an undergraduate intermediary between the students and the teaching fellows, who are usually graduate students. Once again, Gupta took her involvement to the next level, devoting herself to the students and being open and available when students needed her help most.

"She would meet with people in her section after-hours, talk to them and answer questions before exams and always go early to lab sessions," Zinaman says. "That was above and beyond the call of duty. It was definitely beyond the job description of a course assistant."

"When her BS2 students were about to have an exam, that was the main thing she would think about," Sohal says. "She would spend days just helping them prepare for the exam or helping them to turn in a lab report."

Her individual accomplishments in biology are no less impressive. She spent four years working in the laboratory of Harvard Medical Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Roberto Kolter, studying the survival mechanisms of bacteria when they suffer starvation.

A graduate student in the lab several years ago determined that the surviving bacteria were mutant strains of bacteria, and that the takeover of the bacteria population by the mutant strains was much faster than expected. The finding changed the way scientists in the lab looked at the rate at which evolution occurred, but more work was left to be done.

"Srishti's work has been important in validating this prior work in the lab," Kolter says. "But she has also found a whole new set of mutant alleles that can take over when the population has no food. She also answered the question of whether such population takeovers were occurring in the real world and not just in the laboratory. They were."

Kolter says he is certain that Gupta will become a scientist of the highest caliber.

"She worked for me at the level of an advanced graduate student in her way of conceiving experiments and controlling those experiments," Kolter says. "Her potential is great. She will be a first-rate scientist."

But what struck Kolter most, as with others with whom Gupta works, is the incredible enthusiasm and genuine curiosity with which she approaches her work.

"Srishti is eager to learn and is enthusiastic," Kolter says. "In the 15 years I have been in the lab, her thesis has been the most fun...undergraduate thesis I've been involved with."

Gupta's friends are quick to agree with this assessment.

"A lot of people work in a lab just for their resume," says Terri Halperin '97, a friend of Gupta. "She was doing her lab work for the sheer purpose of learning."

An advanced standing student, Gupta's thesis work earned her both the A.B. and A.M. degrees.

Next year, she will trade Cambridge, Mass., for Cambridge University in England, where she will continue her work on bacteria in pursuit of an M.Phil. degree. After the year in England, she will return here to attend Harvard Medical School. Ultimately, Gupta says, she may go into academic medicine or work for the Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization.

Given the richness of her activities, it's no surprise that Gupta has found the last four years some of the most rewarding of her life.

"It took me two years to figure out how to be happy here and how to grow here," Gupta says. "But the past two years have more than made up for anything I didn't do my first two years here. Harvard is a really great place."

"It takes some time and effort to figure out what you're going to get out of it," she says. "But when you do, it's totally worth it. I wouldn't trade this experience for anything."CrimsonEugene Y. ChangGUPTA, seen here working in lab, has made great strides in her studies of microorganisms. INSET: Glamour Magazine photo spread.

"I started very differently freshman year, mostly concentrating on musical things," Gupta says. "Around sophomore year, I became more involved in the South Asian community on campus. I realized the importance of culture, and became really in touch with my South Asian culture. I discovered South Asia for myself, and my activities became more culturally-based."

Her involvement with the SAA came directly from her desire to foster a large South Asian community on campus. When she arrived on campus in 1993, the organization was small, consisting of only a few groups of friends.

Gupta started out with a limited involvement in the SAA and rose to the position of SAA liaison to the AAC, where she first tackled the issue of ethnic studies.

But after spending some time working in the organization, Gupta says she began to feel that SAA needed a change.

"I decided that there's a lot that the SAA can offer," Gupta says. "It was really important to me to make it more accessible to everybody, not just a core group of people. There are so many South Asians on the campus. They should all feel like the SAA is equally accessible to them."

Spurred to action, Gupta ran for co-president of SAA at the end of her sophomore year on a ticket with Vikaas S. Sohal '97. The two won and immediately introduced some changes to the SAA.

The group's range of activities expanded to include not only Ghungroo, SAA's yearly dance and cultural show, but also readings, discussion tables, social events, and inter-ethnic events.

Sohal cites Gupta's work on Ghungroo as an example of her devotion to an open, welcoming community. Some of the most important dances in the show are the group dances, in which teams of dancers train together for weeks in preparation for the show. These dances are important for the organization because, Sohal says, students get to know each other in addition to learning about culture.

"[Gupta] went to great lengths to be sure everyone was put in a dance and that every dance had a broad distribution of people both in terms of talent and the class years of the people in the dances," Sohal says. "That's one example of the attitude that she brought to the organization for which I admire her."

Gupta and Sohal's efforts to expand SAA's membership were extremely successful, according to current SAA Secretary Sushant Srinivasan '98.

Part of the reason I ran for secretary was because I felt so comfortable after going to the events for one year," he says. "They had a diverse array of events, and I felt I could go to the ones I was interested in."

Gupta was also instrumental in reaching out to and co-sponsoring events with other minority organizations on campus, such as the Asian American Association, the Philippine Forum, and the Harvard Foundation.

But Gupta didn't just preach openness; she exuded it. When Nikhil Chandra '99 suffered a flood in his room, which destroyed all of his textbooks and notes just before exam period last year, Gupta came to the rescue. She organized a "Help Nick" campaign among SAA members to get him copies of notes and textbooks so that he could study.

"She stopped me in the Science Center and offered to help me out," Chandra says. "I'd never really had a conversation with her before, but she just flagged me down in the Science Center."

It was, quite simply, Srishti being Srishti.

Gupta always emphasized the little things that made people feel welcome. She would help members with problem sets. She would give medical school advice to fellow aspiring doctors among the membership. She took it upon herself to do what it took to make the SAA not just a small cultural organization but a genuine support network and social center for the South Asian community on campus.

Ethnic Studies

Her devotion and passion for cultural activities did not stop at the SAA.

Gupta served as the vice-chair of the AAC during her junior year. Having discovered the importance of culture for herself, she characteristically wanted to share her enthusiasm with others. As a result, she immersed herself in the ethnic studies debate and was instrumental in the production of the AAC's ethnic studies report two years ago.

She and her AAC colleagues worked closely with Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, as well as Professors of Afro-American Studies Cornel R. West '74 and K. Anthony Appiah, to increase the number of ethnic studies courses in the curriculum.

"In the popular elections for the Undergraduate Council, 'ethnic studies' was like a buzzword," Gupta says. "I saw a big jump in terms of campus awareness of ethnic studies, and that was a great start."

But what Gupta found perhaps most rewarding was what she learned about the Harvard administration and how it attempts to improve the curriculum.

"Working on it was really good because I learned a lot about the big names on campus, about ethnic studies as a discipline, and Harvard's philosophy on education," she says.

Scientific Pursuits

The South Asian community and the ethnic studies debate were not Gupta's only circles of devoted activity.

Her interest in living things dates back to the ninth grade, and since then she has done significant research work in microbial survival, starting in high school and continuing throughout her undergraduate years.

As a member of the scientific community, she wanted to combine her social awareness with her love of science. Just as with the SAA and the AAC, Gupta was interested in more than just the subject material itself. She enthusiastically wanted to share her passion with others.

"I fell in love with science because I had a really great teacher in high school, and I just wanted to share that with somebody else," Gupta says.

To that end, she joined the Experimentors program her first year, which at the time was a program devoted to teaching science classes solely in local elementary schools.

But Gupta soon realized that to maintain students' interest in science, they needed to be targeted in high school. So she and Moupali Das '96 began the high school division of Experimentors. Harvard students would prepare lesson plans on various scientific subjects and then teach the lessons at the local high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin.

"A lot of the kids at Cambridge Rindge and Latin were minorities, so it was a good way to bridge my cultural and scientific interests," Gupta says.

As she had at the SAA, Gupta was able to take subjects that might seem dry at first pass and make them come alive. The students genuinely responded.

"The nephew of my Expos preceptor, David Gewanter, was a student at Cambridge and Latin, whom my preceptor said wasn't very interested in his studies," Gupta says. "One night, he came home from school and told my preceptor, 'I learned this really cool thing in school today,' and it was one of the lessons that I taught."

"Kids were excited. We would walk out of classrooms and people would say, 'That's cool how that happens,'" Gupta says. "It's always great to see someone excited about science, especially when you are so excited about it yourself."

In addition to being an excellent teacher, Gupta proved to be a strong leader for the Experimentors program.

"She was really together and accessible at the same time," says current Experimentors head Jennifer Lin '98. "They really made things smooth for us for our first year."

Gupta's experiences sharing her love of biology were broadened this past academic year, when she served as a course assistant for Biological Sciences 2: "Organismic and Evolutionary Biology."

BS2 course assistants, according to Gupta's fellow course assistant Carrie L. Zinaman '97, who is a Crimson editor, generally serve as something of an undergraduate intermediary between the students and the teaching fellows, who are usually graduate students. Once again, Gupta took her involvement to the next level, devoting herself to the students and being open and available when students needed her help most.

"She would meet with people in her section after-hours, talk to them and answer questions before exams and always go early to lab sessions," Zinaman says. "That was above and beyond the call of duty. It was definitely beyond the job description of a course assistant."

"When her BS2 students were about to have an exam, that was the main thing she would think about," Sohal says. "She would spend days just helping them prepare for the exam or helping them to turn in a lab report."

Her individual accomplishments in biology are no less impressive. She spent four years working in the laboratory of Harvard Medical Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Roberto Kolter, studying the survival mechanisms of bacteria when they suffer starvation.

A graduate student in the lab several years ago determined that the surviving bacteria were mutant strains of bacteria, and that the takeover of the bacteria population by the mutant strains was much faster than expected. The finding changed the way scientists in the lab looked at the rate at which evolution occurred, but more work was left to be done.

"Srishti's work has been important in validating this prior work in the lab," Kolter says. "But she has also found a whole new set of mutant alleles that can take over when the population has no food. She also answered the question of whether such population takeovers were occurring in the real world and not just in the laboratory. They were."

Kolter says he is certain that Gupta will become a scientist of the highest caliber.

"She worked for me at the level of an advanced graduate student in her way of conceiving experiments and controlling those experiments," Kolter says. "Her potential is great. She will be a first-rate scientist."

But what struck Kolter most, as with others with whom Gupta works, is the incredible enthusiasm and genuine curiosity with which she approaches her work.

"Srishti is eager to learn and is enthusiastic," Kolter says. "In the 15 years I have been in the lab, her thesis has been the most fun...undergraduate thesis I've been involved with."

Gupta's friends are quick to agree with this assessment.

"A lot of people work in a lab just for their resume," says Terri Halperin '97, a friend of Gupta. "She was doing her lab work for the sheer purpose of learning."

An advanced standing student, Gupta's thesis work earned her both the A.B. and A.M. degrees.

Next year, she will trade Cambridge, Mass., for Cambridge University in England, where she will continue her work on bacteria in pursuit of an M.Phil. degree. After the year in England, she will return here to attend Harvard Medical School. Ultimately, Gupta says, she may go into academic medicine or work for the Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization.

Given the richness of her activities, it's no surprise that Gupta has found the last four years some of the most rewarding of her life.

"It took me two years to figure out how to be happy here and how to grow here," Gupta says. "But the past two years have more than made up for anything I didn't do my first two years here. Harvard is a really great place."

"It takes some time and effort to figure out what you're going to get out of it," she says. "But when you do, it's totally worth it. I wouldn't trade this experience for anything."CrimsonEugene Y. ChangGUPTA, seen here working in lab, has made great strides in her studies of microorganisms. INSET: Glamour Magazine photo spread.