Choosing summer students

I am now back in India, still sick and under strong medication, which along with the jet lag and extreme heat ensures that I sleep through most of the day.  I will be heading to N1 city tomorrow morning.

One of my important priorities for the coming two months is to supervise summer students. I am doing this for the first time.
Summer students at N1 come in through two main channels: the Indian Academy of Sciences- Summer Research Fellowship Programme and a fellowship programme run by N1 independently.  The objective of both programmes is to give an opportunity to students from all over India, especially teaching-specific universities, to work with scientists at research-based places and get some exposure to scientific research (something that may not be available to them at their universities).  Students from IIX institutes also apply to these programmes because their course work requires them to undertake projects during summer outside their institutes.

Students from the former channel apply directly to the Academy, indicating who they want to work with.  The proposed summer supervisor has no say in the selection process, but has the freedom to turn down a selected applicant upon being informed by the academy.  Two first year undergraduate students undergraduate will be working with me under this category.

Students coming in through N1's fellowship programme write directly to the faculty member with whom they want to work.  I received several such applications this year.  Instead of waiting till the last date of receiving applications and then deciding, I kept responding to the applications as and when they arrived.
I obviously did not expect undergrad students to write long research proposals. I just expected them to tell me about their previous coursework and what topics interest them.  I also expected them to know a little about what I do before applying to me.  As it turned out, even this was a lot to expect.
I received several applications addressing me as "sir" (In India, it is uncommon for students to address faculty members by their first names or even as Dr/Prof Last Name. Sir or madam is the most common form of address.)  I also received many applications in which the applicant expressed an interest in working in a subfield of my STEM field which is currently very hot and fashionable.  My own research area is very different from this research area.  Anyone who visits my webpage can easily figure this out and also that I am not a "sir"!  It was clear that the applicant was sending the same application everywhere and did not even bother to find out who the application was going to.
These applications were obviously rejected.  If this student had prepared a good application in other respects (like a good CV indicating their previous academic performance and preparation), I wrote back to them mentioning that their "research interests" do not coincide with mine.  Otherwise, I did not reply to these emails.
The applications that had me hopping mad looked something like this:

Dear sir,
I wish to pursue higher studies abroad.  Please accept me as a summer student.  Writing a paper with you  with facilitate my application abroad.
Yours,
Clueless Undergrad

While I have nothing against students wanting to go abroad, I don't like students who state this as their main aim in working with me rather than gaining knowledge.  I also do not like students who demand that I write papers with them!  Depending on my mood and available time, I wrote back to some of these students indicating how their application is incomplete and inappropriate.

I did get a few genuine and honestly written applications and in a burst of enthusiasm, I accepted six of these.  
There will be a total of eight summer students working with me this summer.  Most of them are second and third year undergrads who wish to major in my STEM field, but have had little coursework in it so far.  They are expected to study the topic assigned to them, work on problem sets, conduct experiments and submit a write up at the end of two months.
I think I could have done with a fewer number of students. But, now that the decision has been taken, I must do my best to make their stay productive.
I look forward to meeting them in a couple of days.  My next post will be about my strategies for supervising all these students at the same time.
Right now, the antibiotics are kicking in and it's time to sleep (and I have miles to go AFTER I sleep.....)

Recuperating

I have been unwell since the last couple of weeks. I will fly back to India towards the end of this week and am trying to rest and recover before the long trip and rejoining N1. This is particularly hard in the midst of a hectic traveling schedule.
I will be back soon with a series of posts on supervising undergraduate students. Stay tuned!

Waiting to go home

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am now wrapping up a semester long visit  to North America. This has been a productive semester. I was glad to be able to talk to many people in my field. I was also glad to be able to focus completely on science and not deal with administrative work at N1.  
I am refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to go back home now.  My department has to take many important decisions in the coming weeks related to faculty hiring, supervising of grad students and course structure for our undergraduate and graduate programs.  I am all set to jump right into it.  While on my sabbatical, I had a chance to talk to some senior colleagues in North America, who have given me valuable advice about many of these matters. A few days ago, I was particularly fortunate to meet a British emeritus professor who started his career in the early sixties in one of the IITs.  He spent four years there before returning to England.  He generously shared his experiences with me.  Much of what he mentioned is very similar to the current situation in N1.  I felt very encouraged and inspired after talking to him.

While I was away, many important events have taken place at N1.  Many labs have moved into our new, permanent campus.  The students residence is also well underway and expected to be ready by the start of the next term.  This makes me very happy because when I joined last year, the new campus was not much more than a deserted piece of flat land.  I am very excited to see it quickly evolving into a proper institute campus!  

The other things that I am eagerly looking forward to are home-made freshly baked chapatis, drinking tea in a Kulhar at our institute's tea shop,  fresh milk and vegetables from local farms AND mangoes freshly plucked from  trees within our campus :)

Traveling unlimited

As a busy and productive sabbatical semester in North America draws to an end and I prepare to return to India, I am in a mood to relax and reminisce about my migrant life.

Traveling has been the most constant feature of my life.  As a child of a central government employee with a (very) transferable job and later as an academic, I lived in many different parts of India and later in North America.  

In particular, during my childhood years. I was never sure when and where I would be going next.  I have been to a dozen different high schools in the northern, western and north-eastern parts of India.  It was a very common situation for my father to arbitrarily return home some evening with a transfer order, usually to a town in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a school year.  It was awkward and difficult to adjust to a new school curriculum and teaching system in a different state and in the middle of the year, but my attentive and super-disciplined mother managed to pull me through. 

While it was great to live in various parts of the country (often called "tribal" areas by the city dwellers) with very different cultures and make new friends, it was equally painful to say goodbye to them abruptly and move on within a few months. In the internet-less era, I have burnt a lot of midnight oil (literally so because of electricity problems in these  remote towns) writing letters to friends in other remote towns which probably never reached them.  

I remember moving from a warm part of the country to the Himalayas in the chilly month of November and then moving back from the pleasant weather in the hills to a hot and scorching summer in the plains in the month of May.  Experience in dealing with sudden changes of climate was useful to me when I moved to a very cold place in the east coast of North America for grad school.

The first place where I stayed for five years at a stretch was my PhD university. Like many grad students, I grew very attached to PhD city and found it emotionally overwhelming to leave.  For a long time, I naively considered it home.  The attraction has weaned off over the years as almost all my friends there have also moved away, but I still feel excited at the prospect of visiting it again.

After that, I did postdocs in two more cities in North America.  By the time of my second postdoc, I got tired of all the traveling and instability and very much wanted to go to some place where I could live happily and permanently for the rest of my life.  I was almost ready to become a citizen of this country, when life threw up some pleasant surprises and I found myself in N1, back in India.  If all goes well, N1 might be the place where I will "live happily ever after", but who knows what the future holds?

Anyhow, within a few months of my stay at N1-city, I found myself ready to make another 5-month visit to North America.  Before returning to India, I plan to visit PhD city, postdoc 1 city and another city, where my postdoc 2 mentor now lives.   

Moving around was fun when I was a child and all the planning was done by my parents.  I just enjoyed life while my parents did all the hard work.  As a grad student/postdoc, I was in charge of my own moves** and it wasn't all that fun. The move back to India required strenuous planning, but was exciting nonetheless.  

Traveling after joining N1 has been the most fun because now I travel with the assurance that I have a secure, permanent abode to return to.  

** My North American friends helped me a lot with all my moves, something that I will always be grateful for.