For five years Dr. Sunil Dasgupta has been hosting “Wednesday Wipeout,” an open dialogue about current events between faculty, staff, and students on campus. The activity is not required, nor do students receive extra credit. But at noon on a Wednesday in October, during the height of midterms, every chair is full.
“There is no silver bullet to engaging students,” Dasputa said of Wednesday Wipeout. “I am trying to get them to think more deeply about the material they are learning.”
Dasgupta joined UMBC at the Universities at Shady Grove in 2009 as the Program Director of the B.A. Political Science program. He manages the program at the USG campus and teaches one to two courses each semester. His enthusiasm and experience have helped the program triple in size and graduate a cohort of students who hope to make their mark in various career fields.
He hopes that students come to the program with questions, but leave with one important answer – knowing what’s next. To him, student success has no standard measure. It is more than class assignments and grade point averages.
“Different students will gain different skills. The choices they make about what skills to develop – that’s the education. At the end, can they say what they want to do next?”
For political science graduates that can mean a variety of things from government to business to entrepreneurship. Many students begin careers in local or federal government, the military, consulting services, or prepare for graduate school. One recent student went into business for himself, opening an ice cream sandwich truck. Surprising to most, but not to Dasgupta. The student credits his political science education.
“It taught him to think about things in ways he never thought before. I am very proud of him,” he said.
Dasgupta can relate to exploring a range of career paths. Before teaching, he worked as an advertising executive, accountant, and journalist. He found his way to the field of political science after working as reporter covering politics in his hometown of Delhi, India.
“I knew I wanted to get a graduate education because I had questions. There were things I was writing about that I did not know much about.”
A senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a published researcher, Dasgupta studies war and peace. Recently, he has published papers on the rise of China and India as military powers and alliance politics in the context of insurgency. He brings his curiosity and openness to his classroom and to the USG campus.
He has been instrumental in launching cutting edge interdisciplinary programing at USG that brings together different perspectives and shared resources. The UMBC political science program has a standing partnership with the University of Maryland, College Park criminology and criminal justice program at USG to offer a shared course each semester. The course has drawn capacity enrollment for five years with topics ranging from civil rights to judicial law.
Dasgupta also helped lead an effort in Fall 2013 to offer a course in Crisis Management in partnership with the University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland Law School’s Center for Health and Homeland Security.
With evident passion for teaching and learning, he admits that he “demands the very best from his students.” And, also from himself. He sees that his students are in a position to figure out how to change the world, the country, and society. He just hopes to provide some of the tools and direction.
“A great student takes engagement and builds something on top of it – that could be in or out of class. If a student defaults, I’ve failed. The whole point is transformation.”