Rekha Srinivasan, a senior instructor in the Department of Chemistry, received two honors this year: the Faculty Advisor of the Year Award from the Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable (WISER) and the J. Bruce Jackson, MD, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring. Photo by Mike Sands.
Ever since she was an elementary school student in Euclid, Ohio, Rebekah Russell could count on an almost uninterrupted parade of A’s scrawled atop her assignments. When she entered college, she didn’t expect anything different. Then she saw the C on her first test in organic chemistry at Case Western Reserve.
She was hardly the only student in the class to get off to a shaky start. Introductory Organic Chemistry has a reputation as a weed-out course for many aspiring physicians. But Russell took no consolation from that. What made the grade easier to bear was a note that accompanied it. “You could have done better,” Senior Instructor Rekha Srinivasan had written. “Come see me. We’ll work on it.”
Russell was astonished. “It was like she took a personal interest in me. I felt motivated. She said I could do better. I was like, She really believes in me! Wow!”
In fact, Srinivasan holds all her students to a high standard.
“Sometimes, they think I am intimidating,” she concedes. “I will never lie. I will never say, ‘If you get a C, it’s all right.’ I don’t care if they like me or dislike me. My job is to show them the beauty of organic chemistry. I start with the fact that I have a passion for it.”
Srinivasan’s approach has won her a long string of honors, including a 2010 Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the 2015–16 Faculty Advisor of the Year Award from the Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable (WISER) and a 2016 J. Bruce Jackson, MD, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring. Many of the students who have come through her classes during her 12 years as an instructor at CWRU speak of her lasting impact on their lives.
“She definitely makes you work for your grade,” says Rupika Kapur, a junior pre-med student from Phoenix. “But if you ever need her, she will be there for you. Even if you’re no longer in her class, she’s there.”
The story of Srinivasan’s interactions with Russell is fairly typical. Russell, now a rising junior, was one of 40-plus students who heeded Srinivasan’s constant invitations to visit her and ask questions. “Those 40 students, I will remember every question they ask me,” Srinivasan says. “I know from day 1 that they try, and they want to do better. They stop by and talk to me and explain their fears to me. Rebekah had come to my office hours; I’d seen her struggle through those problems. I could see her potential.”
Sure enough, Russell ended up loving organic chemistry and walked away with an A in the first semester of the two-course sequence. Looking back on her work with Srinivasan, Russell says, “She’s stern, but it’s for all the right reasons.”
Srinivasan began teaching in her early 20s, in her native India. She had earned two master’s degrees by then, one in analytical chemistry, the other in synthetic organic chemistry, but, acceding to her family’s wishes, she put off pursuing the doctoral degree she craved. “If you have a PhD,” her father told her, “we will have trouble getting you married.” Instead, she taught organic chemistry to undergraduates and analytical chemistry to graduate students just a year or two her junior at a college for women in Bangalore. It was there that she met a student whose fate continues to haunt her.
“This was one of my best students,” Srinivasan recalls. “She loved to study. She was really good. One day, she stopped coming to college.” Srinivasan was desperate to find out what had happened. Eventually, she learned that the student had been married off to a man 20 years her senior who did not want his new bride to continue her education.
“If you were from an upper-middle-class family like mine, you could say no to a proposal. If you were from a poorer family—this was 20 years ago—you couldn’t,” Srinivasan says. “Had I known earlier, my parents would have helped me; I would have stepped in so she could have an education, and even shelter. I remember coming home and crying for days. I was 23. I still think of her every day.”
Unlike the student who disappeared, Srinivasan could choose among the suitors her parents presented to her, waiting for one who respected her ambition. In 1998, her parents invited Ravi Srinivasan, a young biomedical engineer working in Cleveland, and his parents for a visit. He was her third suitor. While she and Ravi sat outside on her home’s tiny patio, their parents sat inside, listening to everything they said.
She asked every suitor three questions: Was he a vegetarian? Did he smoke? And did he drink alcohol? Ravi answered these questions the way she hoped. But there was more to it. “There was just something about him, the way he spoke to me, that I felt, This is somebody I could do this with.” Then she dropped her bombshell: She wanted to pursue a doctoral degree. “He asked me what I was interested in. This was so surprising to me! I said nuclear quadrupole resonance. I think I said that N14 was the quadrupole nuclear, and he said it was N15. And I said, ‘No, N14.’ That was our first argument.”
During her first year of marriage, while working on her doctorate in chemistry at Case Western Reserve, Srinivasan had a daughter, Swathi, who is now 16. After completing her postdoctoral studies, she began teaching at CWRU.
Srinivasan constantly invites students in her organic chemistry classes to visit her and ask questions. Rebekah Russell (right) took her up on her offer. Photo by Mike Sands.
Her experiences have helped shape her relationships with students—especially female students. Usually, they come to her at first for help with organic chemistry, but things frequently evolve from there. “A lot of interesting conversations can happen,” she says. “Some can be about chemistry.“
Peace Aminu (CWR ’14), who is in her second year of medical school at Wright State University in Dayton, recalls how anxious she was about organic chemistry. She and a friend attended Srinivasan’s office hours. “We’d talk about O-Chem, and then we would get in deep conversations about life. We would chat about school, her daughter, being a mother—things of that nature. I’d go in for one thing and come out with a whole new perspective. She really opened my eyes to what it is to be a woman in science. I just felt better about the choices I was making. My career path was doable.”
Even as undergraduates, students like Aminu wonder how they will eventually balance career and family. “The most common question I get is, ‘How do you do it all?’” Srinivasan says. “I tell them, ‘It all boils down to time management. Keep a disciplined eight-hour schedule Monday through Friday. Just because your classes are two hours apart does not mean that in the two hours in between you are on your cell phone.’”
For Srinivasan, the birth of her daughter taught her what she needed to do if she was to thrive. “I was sending my daughter to day care. That was a shock for the entire family, the whole extended family in India. How could you put a 5-month-old child in day care? But it made me extremely disciplined, because the minute I was back home, I knew that time was for my daughter.”
On the other hand, Srinivasan also counsels students to find a quiet place each day and take some time to meditate or think. “Calm yourself. Think about what’s bothering you. Then focus and make a plan.”
Srinivasan knows how important it is for women in the sciences to find mentors and role models. Early in her teaching career at Case Western Reserve, she participated in ACES (Academic Careers in Engineering and Science), a campus program supported by the National Science Foundation to help female scientists and engineers advance as leaders. She learned about the program from Mary Barkley, the M. Roger Clapp University Professor of Arts and Sciences and chair of the chemistry department.
“That really helped me,” Srinivasan says. “Culturally, I was taught you never talk about your achievements. For four or five years I went around without letting people know what I was doing. I had to get out of that. Through ACES, I had a coach, and I had conversations with her. Now if somebody asks me what I’m doing, I won’t hesitate. I will talk about it.”
One of the students who used to meet with Srinivasan for interesting conversations was Nandini Sharma (CWR ’12), a political science major taking organic chemistry. The two started talking one day about helping with women’s education internationally, and before Sharma left Srinivasan’s office, they had a plan. With the support of the WISER program, they started SEVA, which means “service” in Sanskrit. The group raises money to provide essential supplies to a different Indian school each year. So far, it has supported six.
“Government School in India is often one room, with a wall painted black for the blackboard, with four or five grades in one room and a single teacher,” Srinivasan says. “We buy school supplies, tables, chairs, books, school bags, uniforms, shoes—everything the children need. For $1,000, you can flip a whole school.” In some instances, SEVA has addressed children’s medical needs as well.
Srinivasan has also undertaken a second initiative outside her O-Chem classroom. A few years ago, Barkley suggested that she design a class for SAGES, the university’s undergraduate seminar program.
“Rekha, you’re such a good cook,” Barkley told her. “You’re always talking about spices and how healthy they are. Why don’t you do a course on spices?”
Inevitably, part of Srinivasan’s curriculum focuses on spices’ chemical structure. But because SAGES courses are interdisciplinary, she also incorporates history, culture and experiential learning. She takes her students to West Side Market, helps them cook Indian meals and has them identify a few dozen herbs and spices by sight and smell.
In addition, Srinivasan uses the seminar to impart the same life skills she talks to her O-Chem students about. “Do you get enough sleep?” she asks them. “Are you eating right? Your body is your temple. If you don’t treat your body that way, it’s going to affect your mind. Take care of it, and then your brain is able to function. Cook as much as possible. Hydrate yourself.”
Occasionally, Srinivasan concedes, “Some of them don’t like it when I say ‘Eat well’ or ‘Sleep well.’ They think, You’re not our mother. No, believe me! I have a teenager at home; I don’t want 300 more kids. But it’s sensible advice.”
Jenni Laidman is a freelance writer in Louisville, Ky.