The Lodha Genius Programme (LGP) at Ashoka University, Haryana, provides students in their high school years with a taste of real-world science and mathematics through their unique blend of activities. Once inducted into the LGP, the students stay at the Ashoka University campus for four weeks, participating in an intensive programme to learn new skills and gain insights for their careers. This experience is followed by a year-round Continued Learning journey, providing ongoing mentorship, courses, and opportunities to further enhance their growth. They can pursue one of the available specialisations, including one on ecological sciences.

Ajith Kumar, a faculty member at the LGP, brought together the four instructors of the ecology module: Rohit Chakravarty, Ishika Ramakrishna, Priyanjana Pramanik, and Samuel Joshua John. Chakravarty, Ramakrishna, and Pramanik taught the classes and field sessions in 2023. In 2024, John joined Ramakrishna and Pramanik, and the trio instructed the students in this specialisation. Chakravarty’s research interests focus on bat conservation. Ramakrishna is a PhD student at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bengaluru. She works on human-nonhuman primate interactions. She also runs a podcast called The Thing About Wildlife.

Pramanik is a PhD student at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her work focuses on mangrove conservation. John is a nature educator who conducts urban ecology walks for adults and brings nature-based learning to schools. He is interested in studying spiders. With their varied backgrounds and expertise, the instructors brought in multiple areas where students could pursue their projects, although they were free to choose something outside these areas, too.

Hands-on learning in the LGP’s ecology specialisation

The module in ecological sciences stands out due to its focus on experiential learning. While the programme starts with classroom lessons, these are intended to prepare students for advanced project work. The instructors encourage students to think of questions they would like to be answered if limits on resources and time were not a concern. Nudging these young minds to inquire about the ​“big questions” in nature is the main aim of the module. As novices to the field of research, school students usually have broad questions. ​“So, that’s where we came in,” says Ramakrishna. She adds, 

Once they gave us their dream questions, we helped them chisel down the questions and figure out which ones were feasible or doable. We helped them understand why some were feasible while others weren’t.

After the students are set on their favourite questions, the instructors help with the study design and data collection strategies. ​“We provide all kinds of support and guidance to ensure that they see those projects through to the end,” adds Ramakrishna.

In the quest to let the students explore the world around them in its completeness, John says they were trying to convey that ecology can be as comprehensive as one wants. He explains, ​“It can encompass any of the sciences if you want to use that ​“language” to describe what you’re seeing around you. And it got interesting because we introduced the fundamental concepts and then learned them together in the classroom. As we put those concepts down, we also spent a fair amount of time outdoors — visiting a local water body and walking around the campus looking for all sorts of things.” 

In addition to these field studies, the instructors also use games to teach students about ecological principles. For example, students role-play as animals with specific genetic traits to learn how these traits help them thrive in their environments and learn about natural and sexual selection. An ecology-themed scavenger hunt further deepened their understanding of the concepts.

School students’ first stride into the world of ecology

Projects undertaken by students in the LGP have explored a variety of ecological phenomena. They have studied numerous species, including oak and pine trees, flies, butterflies, birds, spiders, rhesus macaques, and even humans. 

A common theme among the projects has been the nesting behaviour of animals, with students studying bird nests, ant colonies, and how human activity affects spider nesting patterns on the Ashoka University campus. 

John highlights an exciting finding: ​“They noticed that spider nests started to appear above a certain height on campus, which corresponded with where pesticides were sprayed.” Students also investigated gender biases through spiders, showing colourful and dull-looking spiders to people and asking them to identify the male and female, thereby exploring the societal perceptions linked to appearance.

In another vital project, the students focused on rhesus macaques. Kumar says, ​“The students looked at the interaction between people and monkeys. People generally say they don’t like monkeys, but that’s not really true! The students found that it depends on what the monkeys do. People have no issue if they are playing or resting, but problems arose when the monkeys ventured into kitchens.” The students gained insights into this complex human-monkey relationship by interviewing people around the campus.

Besides studies conducted in and around the Ashoka University campus, the students conducted field studies in a natural setting. Some of the students from the first cohort of the LGP returned the following year to go on this one-week field trip to Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary at Uttarakhand, along with Pramanik and Ramakrishna. Among multiple studies conducted at Binsar, Ramakrishna describes a fascinating project: ​“We had set camera traps at an area where people would dump a lot of garbage. 

As a result, a lot of wildlife from the area was visiting that place in search of food. Through this project, one of the students wanted to understand the temporal niche segregation at that particular site across many different species. And we got some very fascinating results looking at interactions between wild boars and the red foxes.”

An opportunity for career exploration

The LGP provides significant value to students from diverse backgrounds. Many students, especially those from non-urban schools with fewer resources, are unaware of the career possibilities in science and mathematics. John says, ​“I think it’s important to have these experiences at that age because you see what it’s like to be doing these things. If their projects were expanded, they would be full-fledged ecological studies. So, that’s firsthand experience.”

The growing interest in the ecology specialisation across two cohorts of the LGP is an indicator of the module’s success. Kumar notes that the ecology course had many students who returned to continue the following year. Pramanik says, ​“Our students had indirectly given us good feedback by making other people interested in joining the module.” 

She adds, ​“Before the second batch started, we heard from the organisers that there was a lot of interest in people wanting to join the course. So that’s been really encouraging.” This growing demand is a promising sign for the future of the LGP and its ecological sciences module.