"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.