India Abroad - August 27, 2010

Tiara Abraham,
COMMUNITY
4, admitted
India Abroad
August 27, 2010
to Mensa
GEORGE JOSEPH
Preschooler Tiara Abraham, of Sacram-
ento, California, was recently admitted to
American Mensa, the society for those with
high Intelligence Quotient scores.
Tiara, 4, is one of the youngest Mensans
in the Northern California/Bay Area
region. To be accepted in Mensa, the oldest
and largest high IQ society in the world,
she had to score in the top 2 percent in a
standardized accepted intelligence test.
Instituted in 1946 in England and now
found worldwide, Mensa has more than
100,000 members.
Tiara’s parents Bijou Abraham and Dr
Taji saw signs of her high IQ from the time
Tiara was two-and-a-half years old and
decided to get her tested later. At 4 years
and five months, she was administered the
long standardized IQ test by a licensed psy-
chologist specialized in highly gifted chil-
dren. Tiara scored in the 99th percentile.
She now follows her 7-year-old brother
Tanishq Abraham’s footsteps, who joined
Mensa at around the same age. Both are
among the youngest of the 56,000
Mensans in the United States. According to
American Mensa, 41 percent of its mem-
bers are baby boomers between the ages of
47 and 64, and there are more than 1,700
families with two or more Mensa members.

Tiara Abraham
programming. Despite of the challenges,
the parents are thankful to have two won-
derful kids.
Tanishq was recently featured on an ABC
affiliate news channel in the Sacramento
and Northern California region, where he
was described as a child genius. He too was
one of the youngest to join Mensa and
scored in the 99.9th percentile on the IQ
test.

Suresh Chandra, pioneer dean, retires
Nominations for

GEORGE JOSEPH

NFIA awards
Dr Suresh Chandra, among the first
Indians to become a dean of a college in
the United States way back in 1974,
retired from his post and took on an
emeritus position.
Chandra, who served as dean, School
of Engineering, North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical State
University, was a research professor in
the department of mechanical engineer-
ing.
“Indians have not experienced any dis-
cernible discrimination when they have
applied for administrative or faculty
positions in the university setting, or in
obtaining academic tenure and promo-
tion in academic rank,” he said. “This is
evidenced by the fact that several
Indians today are presidents, vice presi-
dents, deans, and department heads in
colleges/universities and hold many
endowed chairs throughout America —
which is a far cry from the 1970s or 1980s.”
“There were very few Indian students and hardly any facul-
ty members or administrators on university campuses in the
US in 1961 when I arrived here,” he recalled. The current
ubiquitous presence of Indians in every walk of American life
represents a remarkable change in the last 15 years and is an
unmitigated tribute to our tenacity, entrepreneurship, and
self-confidence.”
Engineering education too underwent much change in
these years, he said, adding, “there is much more emphasis on
analytical reasoning in today’s engineering curriculum than it
Dr Suresh Chandra
was in the 1960s. We are significantly
more cognizant of the complex connec-
tions between technology breakthroughs
and social-political-economic change. In
paying unprecedented attention to ethics,
we focus on the interaction of technology
with public health, the environment, pol-
itics as well as technological forecasting
and assessment. A good example would
be the generation and consumption of
energy today and the implications in the
local and global contexts.”
He had only praise for the Indian
Institutes of Technology.
“Unfortunately, the proliferation of
engineering colleges and technical insti-
tutes throughout India, and, in view of
the lack of essential infrastructure and
qualified faculty, the quality of graduates
from these new establishments cannot be
assured,” he said.
He has connections with universities in
India and plans to contact the IITs, par-
ticularly the new ones, to see if he can
play an advisory role in their development.
As an educator he thinks his biggest achievement was turn-
ing a small college into a major engineering institution. When
he became dean, it was one of the three public institutions in
the university system with engineering programs. Now it is
recognized for its vastly expanded offerings, research, faculty
expertise, and graduates.
He served as chairman of the department of mechanical
engineering for 15 years. He has authored or co-authored
The National Federation of Indian American
Associations has invited nominations for the NFIA
2010 awards from Indian Americans with out-
standing accomplishments.

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