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| Vol. 24, No. 18 | March 29, 1999 |
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| Vol. 24, No. 18 | March 29, 1999 |
Three Columbia undergraduates have been named among the nation's best and brightest students by an annual USA Today academic contest.
Aliya Haider, a Columbia College senior and Truman Scholar studying political science and carrying a 3.98 GPA, was one of 20 top students nationwide named to the newspaper's All-USA College Academic First Team.
In addition to her excellent academic performance, Haider was recognized for her research in refugee camps along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. She is also an accomplished artist and editor of campus journals.
Named to the USA Today Second Team were Vikram Sheel Kumar, who has published scientific work on how neurons are connected in the brain, and Charles Leykum, who organized Columbia Community Outreach, a day of service involving 1,000 students and faculty.
Below are profiles of each student.
ALIYA HAIDER
When most of her classmates were recovering from the stress of final exams, Aliya Haider was halfway around the world, in a refugee camp on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan during January of her junior year.
She was there with a notebook and camera, talking to refugees and gathering information on how the political economy was affecting citizens of the countries. The following summer, she used much of her insights while interning at the Human Rights Law Group, a non-profit organization in Washington.
"Being at the border camp was an incredible experience and it really helped when I wrote grants and put together a working group on Afghanistan," said Haider, a Columbia College senior. "I had just seen where the money for research and training was most needed." Haider, a political science major who will graduate in May, has long had an interest in human rights work and international development issues. Her thesis, which has complemented her internships in Washington, analyzes the political economy of Central Asia. After graduation, she wants to pursue a career in international trade because she feels that trade is an area that can have a direct effect on human rights.
"I've been lucky to have professors who have worked closely with me and challenged me to think about the big picture," she said.
Political and economic issues are far from being her single focus, however. Haider also has a concentration in Middle Eastern Languages and Culture and has taken almost as many studio art courses. Her talent has been well-received: she has sold her oil paintings as well as published her writing in Guava, a literary magazine. For two years, she has been the editor of The Columbia Review, the campus literary magazine.
"As editor of The Columbia Review, I've had the chance to let the magazine reflect the diversity of the school," she said, her eyes lighting up. "That diversity, not of race or origin, but of experience, is what gives it a strong identity."
VIKRAM SHEEL KUMAR
Explaining why he has loved his Columbia experience, Vikram Sheel Kumar says simply, "This."
He means this conversation, this interview, this opportunity to meet someone new on campus.
Therefore--despite his published research on neuron connectivity, his three lectures on that topic delivered to audiences of prominent scientists, his work at Bell Labs and his one-of-a-kind experiments at Columbia on neurological activity in rat brains--Kumar does not plan a career purely in scientific research.
He's going to medical school.
"I enjoy meeting new people too much to spend all my time doing research," he explains.
But Kumar, an operations research major in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, adds he probably won't practice medicine for long, either. He's not sure what he will do, but he has an entrepreneurial spirit and a creative mind, and medicine, he says, is a field ripe for change.
"If you go into medicine looking for innovation, you will find it," he says. He has been accepted to Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Stanford medical schools.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Kumar's family returned to their native New Delhi when he was 10. He visits India during each school break and remains close with his family, which includes several doctors; his father is a brain surgeon, one sister is a dentist and the other is a doctor who will start her residency soon. But Kumar claims it is his non-M.D. mother who is his greatest inspiration: "She gives us all reason to achieve."
Kumar's list of honors is long, including president of Tau Beta Pi (the National Engineering Honor Society); he carries a 3.78 GPA and he recently competed at the national level with the Columbia squash team. But you have to pry those accomplishments out of him.
"I believe it's important to be humble," he says.
Indeed he speaks most excitedly not about his achievements, but about meeting President George Rupp on the subway, having dinner with his professors or visiting a fourth grade classroom in a Harlem public school. As part of Columbia's Peace Games organization, he taught conflict resolution to inner city children once a week.
"It was tough to teach them that it's not macho to fight," he recalls, adding that his Ivy League status held little cachet in their world. "These kids had never even heard of Columbia. But I realized that was not what it was about. We were trying to encourage them to go to college themselves."
CHARLES LEYKUM
On April 4, 1998, over 1,000 members of the Columbia community-students, faculty, administrators and staff-spent the day together working on more than 40 community service projects. But without the energy and effort of Charles Leykum, it might have been just like any other day.
This year's day of service, April 10, 1999, will be the second Columbia Community Outreach event, which Leykum founded with Allan Ng, both CC'99. "Community service and activism are values I hold very highly," said Leykum. "I love having an idea, structuring a plan, and following through to get resources to make it happen."
Leykum is a natural leader. His peers certainly think so; he has been elected president of his Columbia College class all four years. "Working with administrators and fellow students in the past four years has been rewarding," Leykum said. "I've worked on some great projects including housing and capital improvements, and student relations with the college community."
As a first-year, he participated in a pre-orientation program, Columbia Urban Experience, that was a week-long series of community service events. "It opened up my eyes to the opportunities for community service," he said. "I was inspired." At the end of his first year, he organized a "First-Year Day Out," where members of the first-year class cleaned up Morningside Park in conjunction with the NYC Parks Department.
He chose an academic major in economics because urban economics and micro economic theory interested him. He is most interested in entrepreneurship and the science of risk taking, the topic of his senior seminar paper, and admits that although he is thrilled to be starting work as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs after graduation, he might someday like to own his own business.
As for Columbia Community Outreach, Leykum hopes that April 10 will bring as much energy and support as last year's inaugural event. "We want to keep building it," he said. "The grandiose plan is to expand this nationally to other colleges-Brown and Cornell and many others are already eager to join the movement."