The Dream Team
BAISHAKHI TAYLOR serves as the Dean of the College and Vice President for campus life at Smith College. Smith college is one of the first women colleges in the United States which started in 1875 and remained as one of the most highly selective elite liberal arts colleges in the US.
Taylor serves as a member of the President's cabinet and oversees a variety of offices that work collaboratively to ensure students are successful during their time at Smith. Specifically, she will have responsibility for academic advising, international students, student affairs, residential life, student engagement, health and counselling services, athletics, career services and disability services. She will also oversee several centers, including the Jandon Center for Community Engagement, the Lazarus Centre for Career Development, the Lewis Global Studies Center, and the Wurtele Center for Leadership.
Baishakhi has been a valued partner to the senior administrative group, faculty, trustees, and so many across the institution. An inspired leader of a truly gifted team, she has, most importantly, been a tireless advocate for the students.
Prior to joining Smith College, Baishakhi worked at the Middlebury college starting in 2015 as Dean of Students. When she left Middlebury College, she was the Vice President for Student Affairs and oversaw the residential life, community standards, judicial affairs, health and wellness education, student activities and orientation, and the Parton Center for Health and Counseling Services. She was also an Assistant Professor in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and faculty mentor for the BOLD Women’s Leadership Initiative.
Prior to her work at Middlebury, Taylor served as the associate Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University and the program director of DukeEngage-Kolkata. She was also a member of the faculty at the Duke Center for South Asian Studies and Program in Education.
Taylor holds a Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Kentucky, a M.A. in Women's Studies from University of Northern Iowa and a M.A and B.A in comparative literature from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India.
Here’s what her co-workers and colleagues have said about their experiences collaborating with her: "In Baishakhi we have been privileged to have a strategist at the table, who was just as adept at turning ideas into real things and “getting it done.” She brings people together, allows all to be heard, values everyone and lets them know they are valued. She is passionate about what she does—committed to students’ well-being, to students’ leadership potential, to students. As a supervisor, she gives equal amounts of support and room for her staffers to do their best work."
Over the past five years, Baishakhi and her team have done superb work to foster what she describes as a “seamless connection” between academic and student life—guided by the core values of inclusivity, resilience, and engagement. Upon accepting the job in 2015, she said to the Middlebury community, “I’m a huge believer that what you learn inside the classroom needs to be complemented with what’s happening outside the classroom. It’s on us to provide the space.”
Under Baishakhi’s leadership, and in full partnership with her talented team, student affairs has been “providing the space” through a number of significant undertakings, all of them crucial and complex. They have integrated students’ health and wellness services to provide more focused and effective support; implemented restorative practices to build a more resilient community through personal engagement; co-led the Alliance for an Inclusive Middlebury symposium; and with the U.S. Consulate, helped to conceive and execute the Field Hockey Project of East India, where Middlebury student-athletes, coaches, and alumnae mentored 100 young women from rural regions of Jharkhand through participation in the country’s national sport.
And last fall, Middlebury’s Board of Trustees endorsed a major initiative developed under the auspices of student affairs to evolve beyond the Commons to a new model of residential life. BLUEprint will develop new first-year housing clusters, create a more robust and enhanced system of student support, and reimagine faculty engagement in the residential life system. This followed an 18-month analysis of the College’s residential life system, and recommendations from the community-wide How Will We Live Together Steering Committee.
Like so much of what Baishakhi has helped us to achieve, BLUEprint will benefit Middlebury for years to come. So many of us are grateful for having the opportunity to work side-by-side with such a remarkable colleague.
She is a National Award
Winning Educationist with 30+ years of experience in the field of learning
& development, under the service of Indian Govt’s Ministry of HRD. She has won
prestigious global awards from Intel, Microsoft, British Council for
spearheading their L & D projects and is also associated with various
educational initiatives of British Council. A Board member of two non profit NGOs, she also manages two schools (Tulipdale under the aegis of TCPDI) who were
community partners of Duke University, North Carolina, USA. She works with
University of Kentucky in the project ‘Science in the Box’. She is associated
with these global roles for more than a decade now. She is senior visiting Faculty
with Macmillan, Oracle Education, NIIT, etc. A Postgraduate from C.U., she is a teacher of Portuguese language, certified from University of Coimbra,
Portugal and University of Macau, China. She is currently the facilitator for
Portuguese language at R. K. Mission Institute of Culture. Her various
researches on innovative teaching methods in under-resourced classrooms have
won many awards and accolades. She is continuing her research in this area and
is associated with various educational organizations to develop and implement
inclusive education using design thinking methods. She frequently participates in various global conferences
as a Guest Speaker in USA, Asia, Europe.
Swati Bakshi Purkayastha:-
Swati is an educational innovator and highly dedicated and diligent teacher of English Language and Literature with nearly 25 years of experience.
She is the founder director of two educational institutions in Kolkata - Tulipdale, a non-profit school for underprivileged children and Funlish, a language school with over 500 students from the primary, secondary and higher secondary levels.
An ardent believer in taking the lesson beyond the books, Swati's teaching method focuses on developing core skills and integrating the SDGs into the syllabus. She emphasizes on "life readiness" by helping kids develop 21st century skills.
Swati is also a distinguished author of English Language Test Papers of MacMillan Publications. As a Senior Resource Person with Macmillan Education, She has conducted several enthralling teacher training sessions and workshops.
Swati also heads an online youth magazine called Pengination. This initiative encourages young students to pen their imagination and create works of art - including prose, poetry, music and dance.
Swati is also an IELTS qualified teacher and CENTA TQ Badge winner. She is also CENTA TPO winner.
Smita Chanda Roy:-
Our Heartfelt thanks to:-
Kevin Taylor:-
Kevin Taylor leads cities initiatives as part of the Climate Program at WWF. His work advances climate action directly in cities as well as supports the role of local governments in US national and International climate policy. This includes the areas of renewable energy, resilience, finance, measurement and reporting, and the engagement of civil society. Mr. Taylor has masters degrees in urban planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and environmental management from Duke University.
Melanie Burkett:-
Melanie
Burkett earned her PhD in history from Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia and currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Advising and
Experiential Learning at Quinnipiac University's College of Arts and
Sciences.
She
also holds a master's degree in history from North Carolina State University,
an MBA from Ohio University, and a bachelor's from Duke University.
Her long career in the American higher education system has involved advising undergraduates, teaching preparatory classes for graduate and professional school entrance exams (GRE, GMAT, and LSAT), and conducting undergraduate admissions interviews.
Laura Marie:-
Laura
Marie is an experienced professional writer with a Degree from the University
of Kentucky.
She
has done extensive work on developing standardized tests and worked with
students on developing test taking skills and statements of purpose.
Dr. Carol Hanley:-
Dr. Carol Hanley is the Associate Director, International Programs, College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Kentucky, Lex, KY, 2013 – present. Carol holds a PhD in Quantitative and Psychometrics Methods and an Ed.D in Curriculum and Instruction, from University of Kentucky. Her undergraduate degree is in Biology with a Masters in Environmental Sciences from State University of New York at Buffalo. Carol brings years of significant expertise in grant writing and research. Her recent works include the following synergistic activities:
- Program evaluator on University of Kentucky five-year Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant STEMCats (2015-2020)
- Member of University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture, Food and
Environment
- Statewide Diversity Committee to develop and implement college
strategic plan (2017-20)
- PI, Exploring Water Quality in Eastern India and Kentucky: U.S.
State Department-funded
- program teaming high schools in Kentucky with schools in eastern
India to do community-based water quality research (2017-18)
- Project partner with University of Kentucky, College of
Agriculture, Food and Environment faculty, staff and students on a
USDA/NIFA program for youth in rural Kentucky,
- Developing Entrepreneurial Youth in Resource-Depleted Communities
(2016-18)
- Project partner with Department of STEM Education at University of Kentucky on grant programs from the Kentucky council of post secondary education. Delivered services to elementary and middle schools throughout the states.
- Develop and deliver science materials to underserved areas in India
and Nepal (2010-20).
- "I found my niche as a science teacher, educator, and outreach specialist for many years, at a high school, state department of education, and then at the University of Kentucky. My EdD in curriculum and instruction helped me understand how learning happens in the classroom and how curricula are constructed, especially science curricula. I am not only involved with education domestically but internationally as well."
- "My PhD in quantitative and psychometric methods gave me a different but complementary set of skills. While I understand how “school” works, I also understand what data need to be collected and measured to tell the story of successful programming to make informed decisions. In addition, I know what how to develop and execute a data analysis plan that fit the structure of the data. Last, my experience in psychometrics helps me examine the psychometric history of an instrument, determine which scales are appropriate, conduct factor analysis to look critically at items, and how a scale might be modified."
- "My area of expertise is mixed-methods program evaluations in the field of education. I have evaluation and quantitative methods experience on multiple programs, including grant-funded programs in STEM education, agriculture, diversity programming, and international water quality and quantity education. All programs have been a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. I have written evaluation plans for programs that are in the funding pipeline, including UNICEF, USDA, and the World Bank."
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