Where There is a Will: 18. Summer 1978: In Pursuit of Ph. D.

First air-travel within the USA

The General Motors at Detroit, Michigan, are looking for a graduate student to work on their newly acquired travel demand model. My classmate Michael Couture (the other grad student in my micro economics class last spring) was there last summer. He says they paid $15 an hour, and they will count this service if I later join the company. Very tempting!

I call them and am called for an interview. I fly from Chicago to Detroit. My first air travel ever from Madras comes to mind. I am travelling by air again after nearly 15 months.

At GM, I am given a demonstration of the computer model I will be working on. The interview is different over here.

As the interviewer is explaining - almost "selling" - the opportunity to me, there is the tornado warning siren and all of us go down to the basement of the building.

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My mind goes back to the interviews in India. The interview in India used to be more like a verbal examination of your school and college subjects. I remember the interviews with Dr. A. L. Mudaliar

and later with N. D. Sundaravadivelu, the Vice Chancellors at Madras University. Dr. Mudaliar asked me why I was late for the interview. "Will you be late to teach your class too?" "I am just now coming from a class I am teaching" "What class?" "I am the Head of Town and Country Planning Section at the Central Polytechnic, Adyar. I finished my lecture and had to come from Adyar to Chepauk by bus"

"Where were you born?" - Thiru. N. D. Sundaravadivelu.

N. D. Sundaravadivelu in 1940 during his wedding
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I did not get selected for the GM internship.

My friend Krishnaswamy and Dr. K. S. Rajagopalan (both UT-Austin graduates) encourage me to go to Purdue and not UT Austin.

I take Greyhound again and go to West Lafayette, Indiana, with my bag and baggage. It is a three hour journey by Greyhound bus from Chicago.

In Pursuit of Ph. D I still want to do my Ph. D. I am afraid I will be an object of ridicule if I return with another Master’s Degree.

I send applications to the University of Texas at Austin. I also get in touch with Prof. Sinha at Purdue University (PU), West Lafyette, Indiana,  to revive my application.

Purdue University is in West Lafayette, Indiana.  Purdue University was one of three US Universities I was in correspondence from India, Ohio State University and University of Pennsylvania being the other two.  I had read a few of Prof. Sinha’s publications.  
   
  Prof. Kumares Sinha

I get a phone call from Randy McMehel of UT-Austin. It was a brief phone interview. Shortly after that I get a letter offering me graduate assistantship at UT-Austin! The Graduate Housing at Austin - one-bed room apartments - cost around $70 a month. But my admission was still being processed and I am asked to produce transcripts from Grade IV!

I visit Purdue upon suggestion by Dr. Sinha.......take greyhound bus......at Purdue, I meet other professors and find a lot more fellow Indians in the School of Civil Engineering. I am assured of an assistantship here also.

At my first visit to Purdue, I meet Anil Bandari and G. Padmanabhan and get very encouraging information from both of them.  (Dr. G. Padmanabhan joined North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND and is now an Emeritus Professor there.  Anil Bhandari went back and settled in Kenya. (He was from Tanzania))

 
Dr. G. Padmanabhan, PE, F.ASCE
Emeritus Professor, North Dakota
State University

 
------------------ Life at Purdue University Begins: Expecting Family's Arrival
I arrive at Lafyette, Indiana, travelling by Greyhound Bus via Hammond and Gary. I have my apartment at 220-16 Nimitz Dr., West Lafayette, already allotted for me. The housing office is also on Nimitz Drive. I hire a taxi cab and reach the housing office, get the key to my apartment and get dropped off at the apartment. There are two housing complexes for married students. The Hilltop Apartments to the North of the campus are smaller in size - mostly single bed-room apartments. The one I chose is a two bed-room apartment on the corner of Nimitz Drive and Arnold Drive. It is already provided with a gas stove, a full size refrigerator, dining table and chairs, two chairs, and washer-dryer hookups. I get running hot water. The apartment is quite spacious - what a difference from the accommodations I had at Evanston!

The School of Civil Engineering is within 5 minutes walking to the northeast of this apartment. There is a Thrifty Supemarket within 2 minutes' walking at West State Street in the northwest. Follet's bookstore is also in the same shopping complex. The purdue university airport is about 10 minutes' walking towards southwest of this apartment complex.

About the Airport The Purdue University Airport opened in November 1930 as the first university-owned airport in the country. It encompasses 537 acres divided into airside and landside facilities. The airside includes two runways, a system of parallel taxiways and an apron area. The landside consists of two passenger terminal buildings, "T" hangars, automobile parking and the connecting road network. Also located at the airport are academic buildings serving the Aviation Technology program. Due to the continued growth of the university and airport activities, consult FAA NOTAMS. https://www.purdue.edu/airport/about/index.html

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Air Photo Interpretation:

I signup for Airphoto Interpretation by Prof. Miles as advised by Dr. Sinha, and Statistical Methods-I on my own interest. Statistical Methods-I should have been taken before the Multivariate Statistics at Northwestern! The instructor was a graduate student from the Statisitcs Department. Summer School is fast paced as the classes meet every day and there is more frequent homework and tests! Life overall is much better now. Though I still do not cook, I can buy and store bread, yogurt and fruits in my fridge and eat more often.

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I am given a cubicle in the graduate student's office on the second floor of the School of Civil Engineering. The faculty offices are on the third floor. There is a computer room housing several remote terminals, a couple of card punching machines and a printer. There are many more graduate students here. I meet Anil Bandhari again. He was the one who accommodated me in his apartment when I visited the Department a few months earlier. He is of Gujarati origin, Tanzanian by nationality on a German Scholarship. There is Jim Mckemson who helped me get the building key and the key to the graduate office. Anil explained how the office is named Graduate Higher Education in Traffic and Transportation Office (GHETTO). He also introduced me to McGraw Hill book club. I joined the book club and ordered a couple of books and got the Handbook of Civil Engineering by Urquhart, Fourth Edition (10 Sections, 1200 plus pages) as a "free" gift. There is a Taiwanese, an Egyptian, a South African (white), and a Guyana native sharing the same office. There are four or five Americans. There is another Graduate Students office housing T and T students where there are a couple more from India - Satish Mohan and Paul Khosla.

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