Category: Student Spotlight

Discovering literature in the heart of London at King’s College, experiencing learning from the heart of a start-up hub at UC Berkeley, pursuing environmental law alongside industry experts at Nottingham Trent University, or immersing oneself in Data and Policy at a Centre of excellence at Harris School of Public Policy, this could be you, next summer.

Every summer, undergraduate students across India step into their break, choosing internships and study programmes to pack their summer with experiences and learning. A short study abroad programme provides them with a diverse culture and knowledge-based experience while also reducing the pressure when it comes to funds, a best-of-both-worlds scenario.

In an attempt to curate a roadmap for students eager to explore study abroad opportunities, we spoke to Sai Balaji Suresh, a third-year student at SIAS, Krea University who has spent many summers undertaking programmes with prestigious universities across the globe, including the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR), Stanford Summer Session, London School of Economics (LSE) and King’s College London and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania during high school.

Sai takes us through his journey and together, we decode the opportunities present for students who wish to study abroad for the summers. But we don’t just stop there, we also deep dive into Sai’s experiences across the years from high school up until university, in curating an eclectic profile for himself through experiences that are organic but also count.

Summers that were

“I joined Krea in 2020 in the middle of COVID and had consciously let go of many fully funded opportunities from top international universities. But as I made that decision I also made a pact with my parents that every summer I would head to a university abroad for a short summer programme and I did. Last year it was LSE, then HPAIR and now Stanford.

Each of these experiences have been exciting and exhilarating, providing me the opportunity to make learning decisions that fit my future path, be a part of dynamic groups and meet inspiring people from all across the world.”

At Stanford, Sai participated in an eight weeks summer session where he undertook classes on Food, Sustainability and Culture, People Analytics: Data and Algorithms as Managerial Tools and High-Performance Computing and AI. At LSE, Sai did a three weeks virtual programme on strategic management but couldn’t head to the campus because of the pandemic. As a delegate at HPAIR, he and other students and young professionals from around the world met, engaged and learnt from government leaders, business executives, social sector pioneers, celebrities, and leading academics.

Right from the beginning

With a dream to venture out of India right after high school, Sai always ensured that his academic scores were highly competitive. And the summer programme abroad stint has been a part of Sai’s life right from Class 10. At King’s College London, Sai participated in Mission Discovery, a space-related programme for high schoolers where he interacted with top astronauts like Michael Foale and learnt about biological experiments in space from International Space Station Educational Trust (ISSET) Chairman Chris Barber. Yet another summer, his team was in the Top 3 at the Business Plan competition in the Global Young Leaders Academy (GYLA) at the Wharton School.

A simulation of the future

“My experience at Stanford was like a simulation; it has instilled confidence in both my parents and me that I can do well if I plan to study abroad. At Krea, I was able to gain the needed academic prudence for that, and these summer programmes have helped me with confidence. Programmes like these help shape our personalities in dynamic ways. Stanford, for instance, has a rigorous pedagogy and it can be tough but Krea has similar assessment schedules and patterns and also provides us space to indulge in clubs and committees and events; all these, put together have helped me hone critical skills that will help me cope in any of the top universities abroad if I am to choose them for the future.”

Roadmap to pursuing a short study abroad programme

When asked for a few suggestions for students who may be interested to do the same, Sai shares key takeaways from his experience.

R for Research

There are many options available across the world for short study abroad programmes and research is a good way to start.

“I looked at quite a few universities but chose Stanford. I explored the University of Pennsylvania and looked at courses at UC Berkeley but they weren’t apt for my goal. LSE, I had already pursued last summer and the Harvard programmes were shorter, so Stanford fit the bill right for what I wanted this summer. “

Find your fit

● Finding your course fit is important. Hence choosing these programmes after having some clarity on your majors and minors could help

● Choose courses that offer something distinct in your favorite disciplines

● If you have a dream university you couldn’t get into for your graduation, experience one summer
● If you have the bandwidth and budget go to these universities, explore the academic rigor, network and discover the culture
● Some of the programmes just demand academic transcripts but some may ask for an SOP
● If not a study abroad programme, try internships. There are opportunities abroad that aid selected candidates with documentation and visa to travel and work with them
● Explore opportunities within your own university for such programmes. At Krea we have some stellar partnerships that allow us to go to universities like Nottingham Trent, Sciences Po, Harris School of Public Policy, Babson and more

Explore funding options

For funding support, approach the schools. Many of them, including Harvard and LSE, provide full to partial funding for the short study programmes to deserving candidates. “Some of my colleagues were funded partially by their alma maters and by patrons,” adds Sai.

Why Krea?

“I could probably have made it to any university with my academic record but Krea was the only university I applied to in India. I was very sure of heading abroad for my undergraduate studies but then the pandemic happened. We were to be the second graduating batch of Krea; the campus was good, professors really cared for us, and to top it all, it was a new and unique university in the space of Liberal Arts Education. In hindsight, it was the right decision.”

“When you go abroad you have to cope with multiple things beyond academics, such as living alone and sometimes when you come from a certain educational background or board and it may or may not work. Everything is so ambiguous in the beginning, and then comes homesickness and the pandemic was all about being connected virtually. It’s a great idea to study in a university close to your roots which match global standards and then do summer programmes and mould yourself for a life of study abroad, probably through a Master’s.”

Being at Krea and helping build its legacy is something close to Sai’s heart. The buddy system at Krea where a senior is assigned to an incoming student was one of the major reasons that drew Sai to Krea.

At Krea he has interned as a mentor and operations intern with Mentor Match, supporting edtech the startup in its initial stages and also worked as an author for Riskpro Management Consultancy. Sai has also had varied internship experiences over time including one at Padma Shri awardee and the famous Pad Man of India Arunachalam Muruganantham’s factory at Coimbatore during his high school. He also has spent considerable time working with an NGO providing accessible education modules to underserved community schools. Sai believes many of these experiences have made him realise the privilege he holds and how his future path should have an impact on enabling changes not just for himself but for others who may not have as many choices as him.

“In the future, I plan to do something which is more altruistic beyond the conventional, work towards social causes and the planet while creating impact in domains of behavioural sciences, sustainability, and public policy, says Sai as he signs off.

How does Interwoven Learning open up minds to disciplines that are conventionally considered unrelated to the subject of your choice? How does exploring a subject through the lens of another help unravel strands of thought that are no longer in silos and go beyond the classroom?

At Krea we are developing a view of the future through rigorous and interdisciplinary research and education that continuously feeds the design of Interwoven Learning. A rigorous process weaving together academics with experiential learning, broad based learning experience with a deep dive into specialisations and creating well rounded minds, adept at problem solving in a change driven future.

This article is one in a series, an attempt at discovering the experience of the Interwoven Learning at Krea through the lens of a Krea student and how over the years the distinct
pedagogy at Krea enables them to explore pathways that are uncharted and novel.

Hear from Priyanka Kuruganti.

I grew up in a setting where learning was limited to silos. For example, if I was learning Social Studies, my understanding was limited to learning a particular topic in the subject with near to zero experience from the real world. Coming from such an environment, I was trained to look at a given subject and not look at it from varied perspectives. Looking at the world from various standpoints was something I couldn’t imagine myself doing, and questioning everything around me was something I had never done. It was only during my first experience with Krea that things started to change. 

My first experience with Interwoven Learning happened during my Krea Immersion Day (KIC), where we walked around different areas in Bangalore and were asked to observe our surroundings. During this time, my professor, who was accompanying us, asked us to observe a hotel that had a self-watering outdoor planter, and a water tanker was providing water to the hotel. And then, explained the relationship between growth and environmental impact on society. This intersection of various subjects, in this case, economics and environmental studies, is what had surprised me because I had previously looked at these elements as separate entities and didn’t think much about the intersection between these aspects. This is my first experience in Interwoven Learning and the most memorable one because little did, I know that my future would be all about exploring more such intersections. 

During my first year at Krea, I was exposed to various core and skill courses. What was unique about the first year was that these core and skills courses were extremely different. For instance, I was doing a course on Social and Historical perspectives, but at the same time, I was doing a course in Scientific Reasoning. While the two domains were parallelly different, I found it interesting how the same concept and ideology could mean a whole new story and different interpretations across various subjects. This was not only looking across subjects but also within subjects. For instance, as a part of the Data Analytics course, my group looked at the crime datasets and analysed them. One more thing which stood out to me during this time was the idea that anyone could study anything they liked and not be limited by the subjects a student had chosen during high school. For instance, a couple of my friends did not take science in grades 11 and 12 and yet, they had the flexibility to try these courses at their undergraduate level as they had fulfilled the requirement of Scientific Reasoning. This form of Interwoven Learning had no boundaries, and it helped us understand our true interest zones by not looking at our previous education as a prerequisite for future education. 

The pandemic was a changing moment because all our learning to date was now shifted to an online platform. However, this cycle of Interwoven Learning did not stop as we came up with a design thinking idea on how to solve campus issues in a post-pandemic situation. Interwoven Learning had now shifted as we began looking at a new normal by looking at the past and trying to see what techniques could be integrated in the future. With the onset of my major, I was now able to see how economics was related to various fields. For instance, in my Development Economics course, we began looking at resources such as Dollar Street to understand how the poor live by making use of the SPENT simulation to look at the very idea of poverty from a new perspective. 

For me, Interwoven Learning as a process of learning as a student is one which is based on the idea of questioning things around me. The very process often involved looking at a given issue from various standpoints of view and not limiting it to a single domain. Through the group projects, you not only get to learn about the various perspectives but, at the same time, identify yourself. The entire process of Interwoven Learning was all about finding my identity and extending my learning capacities to new levels by challenging myself at various levels.

How does Interwoven Learning open up minds to disciplines that are conventionally considered unrelated to the subject of your choice? How does exploring a subject through the lens of another help unravel strands of thought that are no longer in silos and go beyond the classroom?

At Krea we are developing a view of the future through rigorous and interdisciplinary research and education that continuously feeds the design of Interwoven Learning. A rigorous process weaving together academics with experiential learning, broad based learning experience with a deep dive into specialisations and creating well rounded minds, adept at problem solving in a change driven future.

This article is one in a series, an attempt at discovering the experience of the Interwoven Learning at Krea through the lens of a Krea student and how over the years the distinct
pedagogy at Krea enables them to explore pathways that are uncharted and novel.

Hear from Kathan Pandya

Interwoven Learning – the first time I heard about this concept at Krea University, I only thought of its meaning to be that of having spatial knowledge on a range of subjects. However, after two years of experience, I have now realised the immense depth at which the weaving of knowledge, ideas, questions and perspectives take place as well as how much of an impact it can have on a person. My own journey shows how my idea of the concept changed and how I was able to apply the same to traverse through my curiosities.

After the first year of core skill courses, I decided to pursue a major in Biological Sciences. With no decided minor or concentration, I had the flexibility to choose courses from other subjects based on my interests. I used this opportunity to take up courses in Psychology, Computer science and Literature – all of which have helped me explore the limits of what I can do. The course of ‘Brain and Behavior’ in Psychology crossed paths with one of my favorite topics in Biology: Neuroscience. The course in programming, albeit challenging, showed me the power of computational thinking. The patience and skills I developed in this course, in addition to the Introduction to Computational thinking and Data Analytics course in the first year, have all blended into my newfound interest in computational biology. This has led me to take up elective courses in areas of Biostatistics and Molecular Biophysics. Even my summer internship is focused on drug designing using computational methods. I have to admit that I struggled a lot in the Computer Science course, but it opened up new doors for me in my chosen major. In fact, I could directly apply the knowledge in one of the workshops on Bioinformatics where we had to use Ubuntu and Python to work on phylogenetic trees. I am now keen on gaining some experience in the field of computational neuroscience as well.

The interwovenness has not only steered my learning, it has revealed new aspects of my personality. In the past, I never considered myself as a creative or an artistic person. This belief held me back from trying to pursue or approach anything in that field. Nevertheless, the Creative Expressions course shattered this as I worked on bringing my poetry to life by making a stop-motion video and composing the instrumentals for the same myself. This project then inspired me to compose and write a rap song in the Scientific Reasoning course. Absurd to use music in a scientific course, isn’t it? We performed a rap to present the main arguments from one of the plays on Galileo and heliocentrism. The same creative spirit and confidence compelled me to be part of the Light and Sound team in organising a play. A few months later, I got the opportunity to be part of a Light and Camera workshop conducted for an Arts course. All of this has now equipped me to handle microscopes better with a side note of being able to take better pictures through the microscope in the biology lab or a clearer picture through the telescope during our night sky-gazing events. I eventually found a new skill and area of interest in optics and creative video-making to sustain my artistic side. That’s the fun about Interwoven Learning – one never knows what new pattern will be woven out of the varied intersections. Even my professors often bring in connections from different courses and subject areas to light up the stage of what we are learning with different spotlights. If I was asked 2-3 years back, if I would have been interested in computational biology or even learning about lighting and cameras, my answer would have been a big ‘NO’. But it is interwovenness that has helped me tread new territories and create new pathways for myself. At Krea, the liberty to learn from diverse courses as well as try out new activities, with the liberty to be bad at it, provided me the confidence to pursue them further and develop myself into a more holistic person. In the future, I believe that Interwoven Learning will be imperative to solve impending problems and shape career pathways in the maze of options present for students.

How does Interwoven Learning open up minds to disciplines that are conventionally considered unrelated to the subject of your choice? How does exploring a subject through the lens of another help unravel strands of thought that are no longer in silos and go beyond the classroom?

At Krea we are developing a view of the future through rigorous and interdisciplinary research and education that continuously feeds the design of Interwoven Learning.  A rigorous process weaving together academics with experiential learning, broad based learning experience with a deep dive into specialisations and creating well rounded minds, adept at problem solving in a change driven future.

This article is one in a series, an attempt at discovering the experience of the Interwoven Learning at Krea through the lens of a Krea student and how over the years the distinct pedagogy at Krea enables them to explore pathways that are uncharted and novel.

Hear from Urvi Bhatia

“Interwoven”; a word that you may or may not be fully familiar with, but are most likely to have come across, especially in the context of the evolution of the education system in the past few years. The idea behind the interwoven style of learning, that is growing to be more popular amongst high school students, is to combine knowledge from various disciplines and to learn a certain discipline from the lens of another.

As someone who spent the entirety of her school life learning under the conventional education system, coming across the concept of Interwoven Learning seemed to be strange at first. The division of subjects into just three streams; Science, Commerce and Arts or Humanities, was deep rooted into my mind and thus even the possibility of being able to study a subject like Philosophy along with Mathematics felt too good to be true. I remember finishing my tenth-grade exams and immediately starting classes for the eleventh-grade Science stream. And although Biology is something I am deeply interested in, being forced to take Physics along with it really took away all the joy from learning. But that changed completely as college started. I loved the idea of being able to choose my own courses, and literally paving my own path throughout the entire duration of the degree. Classes in college, both virtual and offline feel more like discussions. Almost all courses and assignments, especially those offered in the first year are structured to be interactive and encourage students to form their own opinions. We are allowed to express ourselves in classes and most importantly, even allowed to disagree with the opinion of a peer or the professor. The fact that we are allowed to have healthy debates is something that was new to me, and it took me quite some time to unlearn and relearn the fact that disagreeing with someone is not equivalent to disrespecting them, as we are often taught in school.

The foundation year at Krea includes 11 mandatory core and skill courses ranging from ‘Creative Expressions’ to ‘Introduction to Computational Thinking’ and ‘Design Thinking’. At first, I did wonder what was the need to study a Mathematics course if I had no interest to pursue it in any form at all? But it was only after finishing the courses that I realised logic, reasoning and even basic statistics are important for anyone, even an aspiring Psychology or Biology major like me. Similarly, the writing and pedagogy course played a massive role in making me adept in not just academic writing but oral communication as well. I also know that after completing the first year, a lot of my peers with undecided majors now have a better understanding of their interests and what they want to opt for next year. But out of all the first-year courses i have studied in my first year, a course called ‘Ethics’ remains my favourite. The weekly modules spread across the course interweaved ethics with different areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Politics, Biology, Ecology and even Sociology. This taught me that no matter which field I choose to make a career in, as a good leader or just a responsible citizen, ethics will always come into the picture while making decisions. Moreover, the fact that I have been exposed to concepts such as Sociology, basics of Philosophy and ethics while learning Mathematical Reasoning and Data Analytics at the same time has provided me with an immense number of opportunities to gain knowledge, not just from all the brilliant professors I am fortunate to have, but also from my peer interactions. These peer interactions, whether during group discussions or just a quick lunch time conversation in the dining hall, have helped me broaden my horizons in ways that I had never imagined.

This freedom and flexibility is something that I am still getting used to. Though i am now certain that the interdisciplinary style of learning was the best choice for me, not only because it has opened up various avenues for me to study further and build a career but also because it focuses on the bigger picture, the holistic development of individuals. It allows me to equip myself with skills such as oral and written communication, critical thinking and problem solving, all of which are essential for a 21st century. The amount of exposure I have had in the last nine months has been incredible and it makes me incredibly eager to find out what lies in the store for me in the next two years!

How does Interwoven Learning open up minds to disciplines that are conventionally considered unrelated to the subject of your choice? How does exploring a subject through the lens of another help unravel strands of thought that are no longer in silos and go beyond the classroom?

At Krea we are developing a view of the future through rigorous and interdisciplinary research and education that continuously feeds the design of Interwoven Learning.  A rigorous process weaving together academics with experiential learning, broad based learning experience with a deep dive into specialisations and creating well rounded minds, adept at problem solving in a change driven future.

This article is one in a series, an attempt at discovering the experience of the Interwoven Learning at Krea through the lens of a Krea student and how over the years the distinct pedagogy at Krea enables them to explore pathways that are uncharted and novel.

Hear from Arya Lovekar

This term, I will complete my undergraduate degree at SIAS, Krea University. At the start of term, I made a spreadsheet to count all the credits I’ve got so far, just to make sure I had enough for my major and minor. Those boxes got ticked, no issues. But I found something surprising – I had also taken enough courses in a third subject I was interested in, and so I’d unwittingly also completed a concentration, or a half minor. Beyond this, I had taken courses here and there that didn’t contribute to either my major, minor, or concentration, but I had had the opportunity to take them anyway, just because I had found them interesting. It would have been impossible to do this at a more traditional university.

All of us here have interests beyond the major we’re doing. In most terms, I made sure to take at least one course that’s outside my major and minor, a small peek into another discipline. We’re given the chance to put these types of courses in conversation with our required courses. Projects and end-term papers for any class can draw upon things we learned in other classes. For a social studies and history course, I submitted a research design for historical literary research. We’re encouraged to bring in other interests too. As part of an assignment in a course on postcolonial literature and arts, I once submitted a picture of an embroidery project I was doing in my free time. No one else has the exact degree I will get, even if we shared the same major. Although we get a framework of required courses, we put the rest of it together ourselves, with some help from faculty and our peers.

Courses can be cross-listed under very different disciplines – literature and psychology, math and history, environmental studies and literature. When a course is cross-listed, it can count towards any of the disciplines it’s under, so the course brings together something from each of those disciplines. For example, in the course under literature and psychology, we read a lot of fiction through a specific psychological lens, balanced out with theory texts. Cross-listed courses are usually a great place to swap notes with people taking a different major than I am, because they always have perspectives I might not have been able to pick up otherwise.

Literature courses very often have links to other topics, even beyond cross-listed courses. There is always something to be learned about the history of what we’re reading, the psyche of the characters, the sociological and political aspects of the text.

Every week, the whole cohort gets invites to guest lectures from a range of fields. Even if a lecture isn’t in your field, it might be interesting to you. These lectures usually start from basics, and so even if you know nothing about the topic, you may have something to gain. In such guest lectures I’ve learned about things like black holes, ethnography, genetics, and translation.

Interwoven learning happens outside the classroom too. Walking around campus or sitting in the dining hall and other student spaces, I’ve talked to students doing projects in disciplines far away from mine, and I’ve learned something new each time. We’ve had star-gazing sessions where a professor pointed out specific stars and told us their names; I went back to my laptop later and read about the mythology behind those names, and how that’s linked to where they’re positioned in the sky. We’ve had workshops teaching pottery, and lighting for photography. Student-led clubs hold quizzes on literature, theatre, math, history, general knowledge – you name it.

Many of us come from schools where each subject was taught in isolation, but once you see the links between the different things you can choose to learn about, it’s increasingly easy to make those links yourself. It takes a bit of work at the start, but weaving together ideas from different disciplines can make each of those disciplines more interesting, and give you new ideas for a project, paper, or informal conversation with a professor or peer.