Gupta Scholars Event

• I’d love to introduce to you our Dean of Rackham graduate school, Michael Solomon. Mike? - Thanks very much Chris. Hello, welcome everyone to this. I’m Mike Solomon. I’m Dean of the graduate school on behalf of the university of Michigan. It’s really my pleasure to welcome all of you to this event. I just have a few opening remarks and I’ll be with you for the first part until you go into your breakout sessions. And I’m really hoping that you enjoy your conversations with each other.

00:41 - I was thinking that when I joined us that last year I had a wonderful time at MSU. And we promised to host you in our Rackham graduate school, and I’m sorry if we’re unable to deliver on that, but community at this moment is important through whatever mechanism we can generate it through. So really delighted to welcome you all virtually here today. And we really not only hope but expect that we will have you into all to join us into the graduate school at some later point. As we begin I would like to acknowledge our friends from MSU, certainly all the Gupta value scholars and as well as Jennifer Bertram, the senior development officer at MSU.

01:29 - And Doug Estry the associate provost for undergrad Ed and Dean of undergraduate studies at MSU. Welcome to both of you and to everybody that made the virtual trip down from Lansing today. I also would really like to thank Margaret and Shashi Gupta, it’s wonderful to see you again and your guests as well. It’s wonderful to see you virtually as well. Hello. As everybody on this call knows, I think we’re just really delighted to be or participant in the Gupta value scholars program that involves MSU, Northern Virginia community college and us here at the university of Michigan.

02:08 - Margaret is a Rackham alum and we’re very proud of that. Having received her master’s degree in political science and Shashi earned his MBA and PhD from MSU. And their commitment to social justice, their creation of the Gupta family foundation, which funds initiatives all over the world in addition to these scholarships is really an inspiration for us all. Now this is the third year that Rackham has been able to participate in the Gupta value scholars. And to date it’s been just a wonderfully broad set of scholars from Michigan, from public policy, higher education, choreography philosophy just represents the wonderful breadth of disciplines that in academia and higher education.

02:54 - At MSU the program has been going for quite a few years. And I’m really looking forward to learning more about your scholars who have joined us today. As I mentioned, it’s really a pleasure for us to come together today. Earlier in the summer, the Rackham staff got together in a retreat and we sat down to try to develop just a simple model about how we are gonna be supporting graduate students this year, since that’s what the Rackham is about. We’re the college that really holds all the masters and doctoral degrees at the university of Michigan. And we came up with a triangle.

03:34 - So it involves academic support as one leg, mental health and wellness as a second leg and community as a third leg. And when I look we’re halfway through the fall term, and I think it’s fair to say that community has really been one of the toughest legs for us in this triangle. And in part of it is that I think it affects all the others. This lacking community can really impact academics and wellbeing. And so I think, my personal belief is that events like these are really important at this critical moment.

04:07 - We should be trying to find community everywhere that we can virtually, with face coverings in person and in a socially distance way outside, if we can, with all those constraints but every way that we can come together just to me seems enormously important at this moment. And we’ve done some things in the fall and we’re gonna be trying to do additional things in the winter term. I can’t be here without acknowledging that there’s a game this weekend and that does represent our rivalry. Football isn’t really top of mind in the graduate school, but I know we’re joined by, that’s not entirely uniform. But we’re also joined by our MSU scholars as well.

04:52 - So that is a form of a rivalry, but I really wanted it to take this moment to just emphasize our shared community. We are all at institutions that have each strived in their own way to best educate students in this very challenging fall term. We’re in a state that is struggling to hang together to overcome the pandemic. And we’re all coming up on an election in which those who are eligible to vote can exercise that privilege and responsibility. And we are further connected through the Gupta values scholarship scholars program and this commitment to the values of integrity, human dignity, and excellence.

05:34 - I wanted to take just a brief moment to thank our Rackham scholars. I’ll just introduce them briefly. You’ll have the opportunity to be chatting later. Angela Perone, PhD candidate in social work and psychology Imani Maát Ankamenra Amen, who is at MFA candidate in the school of the music theater and dance. and Shou Shi Jong, PhD candidate in comparative literature. Wanna congratulate you all for having received the Gupta values award this year.

06:05 - I know this is just a very busy time and so I thank you for joining us tonight. So that concludes my remarks of welcome. I now would like to turn it over to Dr.Gupta, to offer some remarks and Shashi please welcome and we would love to hear from you. - So there is another connection with university of Michigan. John and Karen’s daughter Carolyn is a professor there. I let him say a word about that. - Yeah, she’s a professor in nuclear, I think it’s nuclear something. I’m not sure.

06:41 - If I told you what it was I’d have to kill you but (laughing) No, no. She, yeah - Sounds like nuclear engineering. Sounds like nuclear engineering. - That’s what it is. (laughing) - You got it. Her name is Carolyn Caramze. I think she became a professor about two years ago. - Oh, wonderful. Well that’s a wonderful connection as well. I’m an engineering faculty member so, those words come right off my tongue. (laughing) - Great.

07:11 - - Well thank you Mike, for the introduction. I’ll say a few words and then I’d like Doug Estry to also share his thoughts with us. So I thought I’ll take this moment to give some background on the foundation and the Gupta values scholars in particular, for the benefit of everyone who’s new to the program in terms of the recipients. So I can’t see you all. I wish I could, but my screen is limited. So I can’t see all 29 participants. In the past we’ve met in person and that’s been absolutely special. So we missed you this April and we are missing you now.

07:50 - It’s much better to be in person but like Mike said, we find we have to find community any which way we can, especially these days. So just a little bit of history, Margaret and I started our company Apex, I think about 32 years ago. Yeah. 32 years ago. Wow. That’s a long time. And the interesting thing about our company is that we decided that we are going to really do a social experiment. Okay? Most companies are formed to make as much money as they can. We thought we would create a company which was built on a set of core values and we will pursue those values and hope in the process to make money as well.

08:39 - So those three values were integrity, which is doing the right thing for the right reasons. And in terms of the business, it translates into following a conviction that business should be a force for good. It shouldn’t become a force for greed. So that is what we committed to on integrity. Then human dignity. We felt that in every interaction, one should conduct themselves in such a way that it enhances the integrity of the other part. And this is especially true when there is a inequality in the power.

09:24 - And our feeling is that the stronger we get, the more gentle we should become. And the more we should reach out a hand to help those who are less fortunate than us. And the last piece is excellence. And the idea was based on something my mother used to say, and that is if every day you pursue excellence, whatever you do, you do it to the best of your ability. Then you are going to be a contented human being. Whether you make millions or not, but every day pursuing excellence will guarantee you a level of contentment, which is what we all strive for. Now when we started this.

10:13 - So what happened is our business became pretty successful. So obviously we started thinking, and we spread this culture over several thousand people. Okay? We had about at one point about 6,000 employees around the world. And this was the message. These were the three concepts that I always talked about whenever I talked to the staff. And it took us quite a bit of effort to really build in this culture in the DNA of the company.

10:52 - We would do unusual things like we used to invite young people from abroad, staffers to come to America so that they could deal with our customers and understand the customer’s expectations. So people from India, quite used to hierarchy. So what I would do is I would go pick them up at the airport and that itself used to be a shock. It’s like, Oh my God, why is the CEO come to pick me up? And then I would reach down and pick up their bags and that would just blow their minds. The point I was trying to make through these kinds of things was that bringing that very, very American value, which is also an Indian value.

11:45 - But it’s an American value that we are all born equal. And so I used to say, just making the football analogy, that we all have different roles to play on the team, but at a human level, we are all equal. I must say it took about 12 or 15 years for these concepts to really get ingrained in the minds of the staff. Everybody. And I can tell you when we thought we’ve got the job done, mission accomplished was one time when we went to India, and every time we went we would organize a picnic. We’d have four or 500 people in one city, and we’d all go out on a picnic, we’d play games and whatnot.

12:33 - And usually people would come around asking, “Have you had lunch?” Have you had lunch to Margaret and me. But this last time they didn’t even bother to ask us. They were not being inhospitable, but just they shed their hierarchy okay? And we were just one of them. So we said, okay mission accomplished. And so after that, we started thinking, okay, what can we do to promote these concepts or these values among a broader group of people, especially the young. Now we started this much before 2016, but you can imagine every passing day since 2016, we just keep saying or thinking my gosh, how relevant are these values? Even more relevant today.

13:31 - And as we bring our country back to a semblance of what it has been and should be, these are the values which will help us get there. So what we did was we said, okay, we are going to select young people who have demonstrated through some examples in their life, even though you are young, all of you have had some experience where one of these values were challenged. And I can tell you stories that we read from each and every one of you that gives us goosebumps because of the way you handled yourself when these values were challenged. And so our hope is to find young people like you, who have demonstrated a commitment to these values. And we hope that with our support and our community, as we meet and talk and, discuss these topics that take these beyond your membership in the scholarship and take it out in the real world and really make a difference.

14:51 - So thank you for joining and thank you for being who you are. I just hope you continue doing, living the kind of life that we as Americans should. I mean we as humans actually, should be living. So with that, let me ask Doug. Doug has been an amazing partner with us. Right from the time when we imagined what this scholarship could be. Oh, I should share a few kind of interesting anecdotes from that journey okay? So as you probably know, university scholarships are typically based on either need or scholarly excellence.

15:40 - And what we said was that people who pursue values, come from a very broad spectrum. They don’t have to be excellent scholars, and they don’t have to have tremendous need. They can be people who are affluent, who also pursuing values and they can be people with not so strong scholarly records, but who are also trying to live a good life. And so we had a few back and forth with the university of Michigan state, Doug you’ll remember. Where when we got a draft back of our proposed agreement, we would find a paragraph inserted either on academic excellence or on financial need.

16:26 - And we would then go back and say, “Please let’s take these out because let’s stay focused on integrity, dignity, and excellence.” And so that was an interesting kind of juxtaposition in the university environment and trying to do something quite different. Okay with that Doug, would you please share your thoughts? He has been a champion. He’s been a sponsor from the very beginning and the amount of, what should I say? Heart and soul he puts into mentoring the scholars at Michigan state is absolutely amazing. We pulled him out of retirement, but boy I tell you he’s doing more out of retirement than he probably did when he was working full-time.

17:15 - (laughing) - Well thank you very much for those kind words Shashi. We have had some wonderful interchanges over the years that have really helped opened my eyes and helped clarify for me what you and Margaret really are focused on trying to accomplish with this scholarship. And it’s been as far as I’m concerned, a great relationship. Let me start, I wanna be very brief and thanking the university of Michigan. Thank you to you Dean Solomon, to Chris, to Rhonda, to Anne for taking the time to set this up.

17:56 - I know it wasn’t our ideal kind of way to have our fall meeting. That we would like to have been together face to face, but you have done a really impressive job. And Chris has got to know, I even have the U of M background in, So there’s got to be something to say to that. So thank you again for all the work you did. A few comments maybe to expand a little bit on what Shashi said from my perspective over the years.

18:29 - I’ve either worked with or help Jennifer establish a number of scholarships at Michigan state university and what they all seem to have in common or many of them is the fact that the scholarship is designated to someone within a particular major with a particular disciplinary interest, or the scholarship wants a student to develop certain skills or abilities like leadership. Much less of the time do they seem to have in common some of those things that really students need to develop to establish a foundation that allows them to develop the values that they need to use in order to be strong advocates within their profession or strong leaders. And several years ago, when Shashi and Margaret came along and set up this scholarship, it was somewhat unique amongst the many that I had been involved in the fact that what they wanted was for students to really establish a set of core values, a foundation on which to build a career. We all know that those careers start in one place and move in many, many directions. But what doesn’t change over these times, and in fact only gets stronger is the values that they use to make the hard decisions.

19:56 - To work with other people to solve the complex problems. To look at the challenges that we’re facing now and use the values of excellence, use the values of human dignity, use the value of integrity to make good informed and evidence-based decisions. So I think Michigan state and I know that U of M owes a great deal of gratitude to Shashi and Margaret for helping us establish this kind of a scholarship. And I can tell them honestly that, I work with one other scholarship that’s been around for a long time, and I loved the other scholarship, but I have taken from this one, the things that they have helped us understand and begin to insert some of them in that other as I work with the student and try to mentor them to be the best that they can be. So thank you very much and I’m glad we could all be together this evening. - Thank you Doug.

20:58 - Really, really appreciate you being here and your comments and we’ll echo for U of M what you said about the leadership that’s indicated in the structure of the scholarship. I talk about it to people all the time. Right now, we’re going to go into breakout rooms. My colleague, Anne Lefler is getting really good at this. And we have a plan structure for a couple of things to talk about, but I encourage you just to use the time to get to know each other. Margaret and Shashi have the trickiest thing because they’re going to switch rooms so they get a chance to meet more people. And I think we know how we’re doing that.

21:37 - Anne’s gonna send you a little message that says, “Leave the breakout room” and you’re gonna leave the breakout room, and then she’s gonna move you someplace. In case it gets, we’re beaming up on star Trek. (laughing) It’s gonna be fine. Thanks to all of you and Anne if you’re ready to do it, go ahead and put us in breakout rooms. Hi everyone welcome back. It’s great to see you back. We had a fantastic discussion in our room and I really wanna thank the students for being so open and just share my admiration that you know so much about what you’re going to do to change the world. It’s really pretty impressive. I wanna turn it over now back to Margaret and Shashi, Oh, actually no I’m sorry. I missed a step.

22:28 - We have the privilege to see part of a video that I think you’ll find remarkable. Imani Maát is one of our Rackham graduate students who is a choreographer. And she’s has the challenge of teaching West African dance in this COVID era. And she offered to share with us a video, a snippet of a video, and I will send you following this, a link to the entire one so that you can watch it. But Rhonda, if you’re ready, if you can get that cued up to the beginning and Imani do you wanna tell us a little bit about what we’re about to see? - Sure.

Well first of all thank you all for your time 23:16 - and allow me to present work. So last year was my first year as an MFA student in a dance program at Rackham. And I’m also known as the first, first teacher to come in and teach West African dance in the history of U of M. And so that has been a real honor and privilege. And basically what we’ve been doing with my class, we have been creating a holistic learning environment where we have been breaking down racism, stereotypes, the things and the baggage that people come in with that is projected on them due to the programming of this world.

23:54 - You are able to revisit African tradition to clear that space. To create a holistic learning environment. To create a community, to create love. And then that fosters input on our own things and sharing that energy with others and inviting them to come back and join this circle. So this documentary you’ll see what we do. It’s it’s just not me. It’s like a whole team of people but. We’ve been teaming up making very beautiful innovations and I feel like it is so in alignment with the Gupta of values and I just am so honored to be here and to share so.

24:33 - - Fantastic Rhonda when you’re ready, go ahead and share your screen. And then you guys were just watching the very beginning and then I will send you the link. (chattering) (West African music) (chattering) - [Imani] This far in my career, I have grown a deeper appreciation and passion for traditional African culture, dance, music and techniques. For the last 12 years, I have witnessed how prevailing and life-changing dance can be when you open your mind, body and spirit to the healing aspects of the theme. Currently I have found myself wanting to know more about how the foundation and roots of African movement show up and co-exist in modern dance practices today.

25:43 - As a multi-disciplinary artist who is talented in many areas, such as dance, drone, choreography, film and photography, I understand the importance of research to development and how this informs once evolution. At the university levels, and prior to shifting my focus to African dance, I found myself in dance spaces, often being the only African American student present in class. There were countless occasions where I found myself unsatisfied because there was limited access to teachers who incorporated the African aesthetic into their curriculum and pedagogy. Classical European dance forms and practices were highly favor over anything that was considered to the African related. This left me feeling oppressed and subjugated in dominantly white spaces.

26:31 - I began to question why large institutions were avoiding the critical conversations that needed to be addressed about the significance, importance and influence that African culture has had in the realm of dance and ultimately the world. As an innovative new generation dance artists, I am inspired by interdisciplinary arts in my concentrations in the study of ancient African civilizations, traditional West African dance, modern dance, spoken, word, photography, videography, and African drumming. Through a practice of fusing my concentrations together, I feel that I have the spirited of responsibility to create work and films that are grounded in the roots of African values, principles and ideologies. I am curious to see how this work will impact others. And I am confident that this film will be beneficial for my students, black dancing bodies that are navigating the white spaces, colleagues from U of M and other universities, and my peers in the professional field of dance.

27:32 - My purpose for this film is to cultivate, create, enrich, and inspire through dance and dance making. - Thank you. Thank you Imani. It was so great to see that. And I encourage all of you. I’m gonna send the link right as soon as we’re done, because it’s really a phenomenal film. And I think I know I am personally so moved to see people dancing and moving together in a space again. And the work just looks beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us. I feel very privileged. Now I’m gonna turn it back over to Shashi and Margaret, to say their good byes and then we’ll leave each other, but hopefully we’ll be together again soon. Shashi, Margaret? - Thank you, Chris.

28:23 - We really want to appreciate you taking all the time and effort to get us all together and have this well-orchestrated zoom video. I have to say this is probably one of the most technologically advanced zooms that I’ve been on and the breakouts work perfectly. So congratulations. And it’s been great to see everybody. See some of our existing scholars and the new scholars and get to meet you and talk about our subjects of hope for the future. It gives me a real uplift going forward into the weekend. So it it’s been great to get together. We really are looking forward to seeing everybody in person.

29:00 - Maybe next April, if we’re really lucky, but if not, then maybe in the fall. Because that’s always so great to get together. And so we look forward to that. And it’s been wonderful seeing everybody and Doug and Jennifer, Mike Solomon, I guess Mike’s probably not with us here but anyway, thank all of you for being here and thank you Chris for hosting. - Thanks to all of you and look in your email for the link to the rest of the video and everybody have a great weekend. And stay well. - Okay. .