Does it matter?

Two months ago, I traveled to Srinagar for a few days. This was in the middle of the teaching semester, and I had requested my co-instructor for the course (a large second year class of 200 students) to cover for me. This trip was not for a personal vacation, but it was also not for a research conference or collaboration. I am a member of the editorial board of Resonance, a journal of science education published by the Indian Academy of Sciences. This journal is widely read by school and college students and teachers all over the world, and the goal is to publish good articles, either containing new discoveries or a good exposition of existing science which can be understood by a wide readership. This year, Resonance decided to combine one of their editorial board meetings with an outreach programme at Srinagar. The programme would bring together college students from all over Kashmir, who would be treated to expository talks in the different sciences for a week. They would also have the opportunity to interact with the speakers (plenty of time was allocated for this) about topics of interest, and to ask lots of questions about the topics, course of future study, a life in science and more.

Earlier this year, when Professor B. Sury, the chief editor of Resonance asked if I would be interested in being a part of this programme, I immediately said yes (mainly because of the interesting venue). On the day of travel, I woke up at 1 am to catch a red-eye flight to Delhi, in order to make a decent connection to Srinagar. The uneven sleep hours did not bother me at all. In a truly joyful and excited state of mind, I listened to a podcast and read a book through the journey. I was mesmerised by majestic views of the Himalayas as the plane entered Kashmir, and felt grateful for the opportunity to be here as we descended into the valley.

While waiting at Srinagar airport for a fellow EB member who was to arrive an hour later, however, I suddenly grew anxious: Is it right for me to travel for five days for a non-research-related reason? Is this vanity? Am I avoiding "real" work by doing this?

The essence of all these worries was: does this activity "matter" as much as producing research? In a raw, "transactional" form, I suppose the question is: what position does such an activity hold in your CV? Or more pertinently, will it help score a point for tenure or promotion or whatever evaluation you are up for next? This, of course, points to larger issues. During several faculty meetings, faculty members raise several variants of this question. What matters? Does anything other than our research articles count positively in a CV? How much "weightage" does it have? Sometimes, I've heard the question taking a rather stark form: if research productivity is all that counts, why should a scientist at a research institution spend time mentoring students or making an effort to teach well or, by extension, participating in an educational outreach programme? 

As I was musing on these issues, a gentleman sitting next to me, waiting for his ride, struck up a conversation. Coincidentally, it turned out that he travels a lot for art outreach activities in schools and colleges. He described the students that he meets at these programmes in Kashmir as eager, inquisitive and interactive. This made me realize that I was thinking of the entire question of what matters from a limited viewpoint. The question was not if this activity mattered to a promotion committee. The right question was, "Does this activity matter to the students that I am going to meet?" 

While reading email discussions over the preceding week, I had learnt that students [including a very large number of women students] from all over Kashmir were traveling to Srinagar for this event, and the university administrators had worked hard to make the accommodation and programme arrangements. This was right in the middle of a curfew-like situation because there was to be a presidential visit the next day, and Srinagar was practically covered in a security cordon. People were working round the clock to make this event a success, and most importantly, students had traveled on their own, far away from their homes to learn science. Later, I came to know that Professor Jasjeet Bagla from IISER Mohali (the organizer on behalf of Resonance) had arrived a few days earlier to monitor the arrangements. Professor B. Sury, the chief editor of Resonance, was so seriously invested into making the event a success that he prepared four extra talks, just in case there were last minute cancellations by speakers. The speakers at this event (and associated events organized at colleges in places like Baramullah, Anantnag and Kupwara) spanned a vast and continuous spectrum of ages and career levels. There were retired academics above the age of 70, there were academics at very senior positions and there were some professors who had taught and interacted with me when I was a college student. There were several academics closer to my age and career stage. There were also younger people who had started their faculty positions very recently. But, we were all committed to the programme, and almost everyone had chosen to stay for a long duration (as opposed to simply flying in/giving a talk/flying out) [1]. We traveled the next morning from our guest house at Kashmir University to the venue for the programme (the Government College for Women at M. A. Road, Srinagar). A large community of students from the Physics department at KU (including, to my pleasant surprise, a high number of women research scholars) accompanied us to the venue as volunteers for the event [2]. They also served as friendly guides pointing us to several important landmarks in the city [3,4]. 

Professor Anil Bhardwaj, Director of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, sparked off the programme by a talk on India's space missions. As he shared video footage of the recent moon landing and other successful missions along with scientific details of the work that goes behind these missions, there was loud applause and plenty of questions from the students. Surrounded by happy, inquisitive students and passionate teachers,  I found all misgivings and anxieties about the trip and my participation sliding away. I was where I belonged and I was doing something that I joined the academic profession to do: interacting with students, sharing ideas with them and teaching them in whatever capacity I could. 

Coming back to the question of what matters, the simplest answer I can now come up with is that one has to remember the goals of each activity and place them in the right "box" if we must. It is true that when I prepare my next appraisal report, I will focus on my research projects: articles, PhD supervision, teaching duties at IISER. The outreach/science communication activities will most likely be relegated to the last page. In a sense, good communication skills involve a judgement of what to communicate in different situations. A tenure/promotion/evaluation committee (consisting of members who are spending their precious and severely limited time trying to understand our performance, and give us helpful feedback for our career progression) would be more interested in a presentation of our research programme and ideas, and how well we have been able to take them forward. So, this may not necessarily be the right place to describe our passion for outreach/science communication. 

Nevertheless, this does not detract from the value and importance of participating in an activity like the Resonance Science Outreach Programme. It is a valuable opportunity to teach younger people about what we do and love. In a country like ours with a vast student community that is hungry to learn, such opportunities matter and they have an impact. But, we are more likely to find the impact in the shine in a student's eyes than in an appraisal report. Those of us who have spent considerable time and effort in teaching and outreach beyond our institutional duties will attest to the sheer delight of receiving emails and updates from student participants over the years as they make their way up the academic and professional path. Somewhere, somehow, we made an impact to that one person, they remember and value that association, and we get a chance to see them grow, even if from a distance. And the right place to share our excitement of such activities may not be an appraisal report, but a lecture or outreach session itself, expository articles and possibly, blog posts such as this one! The fundamental issue, therefore, is not about whether something matters or not, but where does it matter and who does it matter to.

If science communication/outreach is something that someone genuinely enjoys and finds value in, the onus is on them to contribute to the extent possible. I do realize that not all academics may consider this important, or even have the skills to do this effectively [5]. Prioritizing science outreach may involve a tremendous amount of personal organization and time management, and there may even be times when we absolutely cannot make time for it. But isn't this true for all the things that we love? Choosing to not participate in outreach activities or not having the time or willingness for them is okay. But, if we do want to participate in them and avoid them only because they do not carry "weightage" in a CV, we may be losing out on something valuable that can indeed have a real impact.

I hope that I may always have the energy and willingness to balance all my professional activities: make progress in my research to the best of my abilities in the supportive ecosystem that IISER provides, make the best use of the opportunities and resources that are available to me, and also be able to share the joy of doing mathematics with students whenever I can. I can think of so many colleagues (including senior colleagues) who work very hard at their science research, are excellent teachers and travel widely to deliver lectures to students in schools and colleges all across India [6]. An example that comes to mind is that of my former PhD advisor, Professor Ram Murty. A Canada-based mathematician and a celebrated number theorist, he visits India each year during the summer and winter holidays. Over the last few decades, he has followed an itinerary to travel to several different colleges and institutes in each visit. After a major health scare in 2017, he had to scale down his travels: but, he still travels twice a year and manages to visit multiple institutions in each trip. 

While spending time on teaching and outreach activities, be it within or outside our institution, it helps to remember that we are all part of a chain of teachers, and must keep it going. While at Srinagar, another symbolic way in which I was reminded of this was a view of a temple named after the great monk and teacher, Adi Shankaracharya, that stands atop a hill visible from many parts of Srinagar.

The trip to Srinagar certainly mattered to me in more ways than one, and I will always cherish the memories and the reflections. 

[1] It is my lasting regret that I did not stay for the whole week of the programme. I wish I had also volunteered to travel to other places in Kashmir to give talks, like many of the other speakers. 

[2] The men students told me about a difficult situation: earlier that morning, they had all been turned out of their hostels without advance notice due to the security arrangements for the presidential visit, and had to find alternative accommodation.  They still managed to keep up their spirits and attended all the talks. I felt terribly sorry for them; students at IISER would be very upset at a much lower level of inconvenience. I do understand the tough choices that the administration had to make, and this makes me reflect on how students in Kashmir have had to navigate their studies through challenging times.

[3] Thanks to the inputs from one of the students, I made a solo trip to the Shankaracharya temple. It was one of the most memorable temple visits I have made; to imagine Adi Shankaracharya being here several centuries ago brought a lot of inspiration.  

[4] Something amusing and intriguing happened as I started walking up to the temple: a CRPF security member at the temple told me that this was not my first visit, and that she had seen me before. There's very little chance of that happening; I was last there in 1997. The driver who took some of us to Gulmarg the next day said the same thing: that he had seen me before. It made me very curious about a potential doppelganger (like the Canadian Maple to the Kashmiri Chinar) :-)

[5] At the cost of sounding mean, I can easily think of some people who will actually drive students away from science if they were to venture to give talks at such events. 

[6] Please check out the YouTube page of the Science Activity Center at IISER Pune. In these videos, many IISER members, as well as well-known educators from various parts of the world deliver lectures on interesting science topics to school students.