Coffee With Hemalatha Thiagarajan! – A Professor
Author: Sundar Rajan G S28 Feb
Hi Folks,
Its my pleasure to welcome Hemalatha Thiagarajan, Professor from the Mathematics department of NIT Trichy. She handles maths courses in various departments and also a few computer science courses. She is one of the best faculty members of NIT Trichy.
Its a great honour to have Hemalatha Thiagarajan maam on my blog!
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Coffee With Hemalatha Thiagarajan! – A Professor!
Me: Sundar Rajan G S
HT: Hemalatha Thiagarajan!
Me: Hello Maam, Welcome to Coffee With Sundar! When did you start you career as a teacher? What are the subjects that you teach?
HT: I started way back in 1979 in Loyola College teaching Math to Undergrads. In arts and Science Colleges I have taught mainly “pure” Math like topology, Analysis. In REC/NIT, I have taught a various courses in Math as well as Computer Science. But I really enjoyed teaching courses like probability, Real Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra and a course on Mathematical Thinking (The last two courses were offered through the IEEE chapter in NIT)and when these are well received by the students( which is only 50% of the time) I am immensely satisfied. On the computer side I have taught data structures, Algorithms, Theory of Formal Languages and Automata. Somehow these are better received by the students than the Math courses.
Me: Maam, you have been at various positions like HOD, Associate Dean etc? How does these roles affect your teaching process?
HT: If you take up admin positions your teaching does get hit. During this time I started using the black board less and relied on pre-prepared lecture material more. I was not happy doing it. These responsibilities do have their compensations though. You are more in touch with the students and get get a lot of feed back from the students. You are also in a position to implement some of your ideas at least.
Me: Some teachers feel that they should reach out to each and every student in the class.. Others feel that they need not wait for everyone to understand? What (and why) is your stance on this topic, which has a wide spectrum of opinions.
HT: I differ in this respect. I had a discussion with a co-teacher once, who said we have to go down to the level of the last student in the class! What about the bright students then? The answer was they can learn on their own. I disagree with this view. Each institute gets students of a specific standard, and the courses must be taught at that level. Further, I have noticed that if the expectation of the teacher is on the higher side, the students put in extra effort and reach at least 50% of that.
I used to be very upset about the fact that students do not put their heart into learning. But after some courses that I attended, I realized that while I can give 100% to what I do, I am in no way responsible if the student does not give his 100% to learning. I am at peace now and I accept the fact that students may have different
priorities.
Me: Do you think teachers should have industrial exposure? Do this help?
HT: In the applied fields like engineering it is a tremendous input. You can easily relate what you teach with what goes on in the industry. In mathematics, in some applied courses like Operations Research, Statistics it is a great help. But the math teachers do not have such an opportunity in India.
Me: What is the most satisfying thing for a teacher? In your opinion, What makes a teacher really happy.. ?
HT: The most satisfying thing is to be remembered by your students, who get in touch with you after a long gap and help you in your activities.
Me: What are your other interests. What do you do in your spare time.
HT: I teach High school students. I am a part of the RMO training group in Chennai. I help disadvantaged students in choosing the right career.
Me: Finally maam, what would you like to say to people who want to take up teaching as a profession?
HT: I don’t find students taking teaching as a profession. It is a last resort if they do not get placed. Whatever be the case, you have to first learn what you are going to teach. Go very well prepared for your classes. If you do not know something accept it and invite the students to get the answers. You can learn from your students no harm.
We see the lack of good teachers affecting the high school students learning process. In no time this will spread to institutes of higher learning.
Sundar, time you took teaching as a good career option seriously.
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Thank you so much for sparing your time for this interview Maam. I surely will become a prof. 3650 days down the line..
I hope we have more and more good teachers like you. Readers, hope you enjoyed this episode of Coffee With Experts. This episode is the first one from academia. I hope to bring in people from different walks of life, have a chat with them & share the conversation/email over the blog.
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20 Responses for "Coffee With Hemalatha Thiagarajan! – A Professor"
Nice one sundar. I always was scared about HT ma’am. And also, i wasn’t fortunate enough to be her student.
Loved this interview. Why don’t you interview our Director?
Very nice! loved it.
Now we have lunch together everytime we’re in the same town. Lol 
@alagu : even I was scared of HT mam once
Thanks a lot for HT maam.. awesome replies… We were the fortunate guys to have HT maam for 2 semesters continuously.. I used to love her scoldings in class in Tamizh and asking us to translate into English for northies…
Note: One of my security questions for some site, where it asks ” Who is your favorite teacher?” answer is ** ****…
@ alagu,
Thanks, Director will come one day!
@ manas,
But as you said, now I talk to her very freely. 
Yeah, even I was afraid of ht maam… in college..
@ harsha,
I remember the scolding in tamil.. It was fun.. We certainly had a great time..
Awesome one.. Really nice replies by Ma’m. I used to be so scared of Ma’m when she she was handling classes for me in the 2nd semester.. i clearly remember – my interaction with Ma’m started only when I asked a question in class, just when she had said “no more time for doubts”… and I had it!.. But then I am really glad to have been fortunate to be in her class atleast for 1 semester.
@ ganapathy..
I know.. I remember that incident.. It was college famous..
teachers really make a difference in your life!…and that teachers do feel happy when we remember them after a long time[last week met my 1st standard class teacher after 15 years:)..she was shocked when i told her that i was her student then]!!!!
@ brocasarea,
I am sure.. she would have been so proud about it.. and she would have told that to a lot of ppl..
I was never HT ma’am’s student so I can probably never relate to “Oh! I was so afraid of ma’am”. I first met her when we visited New Delhi together 15 yrs ago for the Association of Math Teachers of India conference. I was merely a 12th std student and she was a prof from REC and even then she treated me more like a friend than a student. I was fortunate enough to meet her again a few years later at Kancheepuram again for AMTI’s conference and we shared some really interesting discussions on math. The interview brought back all those memories. I hope to see her sometime soon.
@ vidya,
I am quite sure even maam.. will be very happy seeing you..
I WANT TO BECOME TEACHER BUT I AM VERY VERY POOR
Thanks a lot for this blog. I was once student of HT m’am and yes I belong to the category of students who were afraid of her. But she was the best teacher I ever saw.
My deep (and repressed) desire of doing research was infact rekindled after attending her courses in MCA, but unfortunately money paid by software industry was more important at that time!!!!
I admire Suresh S P for taking that bold step of quitting software industry, but I guess all of us (his classmates) knew that Suresh will definitely pursue academic career.
I hope sometime in my life I get to the research path and hopefully meet HT m’am then
Hi Sundar,
I came across your blog when I was searching for Prof. Hemaltha whereabouts. Eventhough I did not attend REC Trichy, she used to teach me IIT entrance Maths for a few months in RSK Hr. Sec school in 1991. There were a handful of students (including her son- my classmate in RSK) who attended her class and I still remember how great was.
She is one of the best teachers I have come across and thanks for publishing this post.
Sundar.. Good Job man… HT mam is my fauvorite teacher in MCA department… I still remember her DS class in the 2nd semester…. I am inspired by her to teach to the students….. Will take the profession very soon… Not only a best teacher but a very brave lady….
That was a good one, Sundar. I was fortunate to attend her classes for 4 yrs in school, from 9th to 12th. Though I graduated from NITT, she didn’t handle any course for me (unfortunately). She is by far the best professor I’ve met. Felt good to read this interview..
Keep it up!
Hi
Hema madam ,
kindly respond for balckhole quantum dot digital circuits
The effect of electron-phonon coupling arising from the orbit-lattice interaction is included to obtain the perturbed electron-phonon states, and then quadrupole splitting is calculated from these states. The temperature dependence of quadrupole splitting thus calculated agrees reasonably well with the experimental results.
Superior quasi combinations of spiral to parabolic ,hyperbolic spoins and holons behavior on dentategyrus could produce quantum mechanical stimulated differentiable neuron fabrication that differentiate the formation of brain line especially when the brain line is separated from the vital life line. This must be the differentiable half spin to full spin combinations associated with a typical upper spatulate nature or lower spatulate nature in such combinations of S phase differentiation
One of the serious problems in quantum computing is that anything that disturbs the phase of one of these spins relative to the other causes a loss of coherence and destroys the information that was stored. It is as though one of the two notes on the piano is silenced, leaving only the other note.” Spin is an intrinsic property of the electron that isn’t rotation, but is more like magnetic poles. Electrons are said to have spin up or down, which represent the 0s and 1s. By exciting the quantum dot with a laser, the scientists were able to block the interaction of these magnetic fields. The laser causes an electron in the quantum dot to jump to a higher energy level, leaving behind a charged hole in the electron cloud. This hole, or space vacated by an electron, also has a magnetic field due to the collective spin of the remaining electron cloud. It turns out that the hole acts directly with the nuclei and controls its magnetic field without any intervention from outside except the fixed excitation by the lasers to create the hole Acoustic balckholes nano technology may revolutionize photonic microchips
as contemplated by Oxford –Anna-Cambridge university research team. The nano dots of
quantum manipulated with light rays may be digitally decode as ordinary
quantum dots and balckholes magnetic field quantized configuration sonic
balckholes inversions
.Blackhole dots confine the helium rays for dark matter
domains in space. Photonics may be revolutionized by Acoustic blackhole
microchips in future in nano technology. The dark genes involved in
catastrophe theory and other genetic reversal dynamics may be revealed later
on .Oxford-Anna-Cambridge-Hubble astro physics group has come out with
suggestion of evaluating the Saturn, Uranus planetary boundary emissions
that may be comparable for dark matter ejections with acoustic comparator in
understanding dark matter genes responsible for catastrophic cross
oscillation in genes. That’s the black hole. One reason why sonic black holes
are so highly prized is that they ought to produce Hawking radiation.
Quantum mechanics predicts that pairs of “virtual” phonons with equal and
opposite momentum ought to be constantly springing in and out of existence .In
theory; physicists can reproduce with sound and BECs whatever wicked way
gravity has with light. The sonic equivalent of a black hole in Helium rays
for biostimulation using acoustic balckholes of quiet and noisy regions. The
region where the flow changes from subsonic to supersonic is an event
horizon. Any sound waves (or phonons) created inside the event horizon can
never escape because the flow there is supersonic. That’s the black hole.
Any sound waves (or phonons) created inside the event horizon can never
escape because the flow there is supersonic. That’s the black hole. One
reason why sonic black holes are so highly prized is that they ought to
produce Hawking radiation. Quantum mechanics predicts that pairs of
“virtual” phonons with equal and opposite momentum ought to be constantly
springing in and out of existence .The solar magnetic field emissions of
Jupiter mixed with Saturn waves must have meaning in cross resonance to deal
with genetic reversals.
Special area of interest has to be taken in dark matter waves of
Hawking*Blackholes quantum dots* mix-up that really twist solar rays of some atomic states that can not be excited by the light field, because light frequency is shifted
for wrong frequency. The more interesting super positions whose excitable
components vanishes exactly when their external deBrogle wave states are
characterized by a particular momentum deals with velocity selective
population trapping (*VSCPT*) the quantum atomic motion and the dipole
theory enables an arbitrary narrow momentum distributions to be included in
the Hamiltonian FWHM band widths operating in corresponding genetic
activations
Sankara Velayudhan Nandakumar on behalf of cape Institute of Technology,Nagercoil formerly with ,KNSK Engineering college ,Nagercoil as research scholar,Anna University with Hubble space research committee of Hon.Roger Davies,Hon.Collin Webbs FRS of
Laser dn of Oxford uk,Hon.Marteen Rees ,Emeritus Professor of cosmology Cambridge ,former president of Royal society, London
knskengg@bsnl.in ulrich.husemann@desy.de
Oxford-Anna -Cambridge-hubble team with Sankara Velayudhan
Well done, Sundar. I was fortunate enough to attend HT maam’s math classes in my school days.Everyone knows about her teaching, no doubts abt tat.But her role as a Godmother for anyone in need is what makes her the best.Thanks a lot for this interview.
I really felt good, reading it.
For the psychiatry literate, it is not difficult to diagnose the Narcissistic Personality Disorder of HT. She has distorted / destroyed the life of many innocent students. She must be expelled from teaching community.
very true my friend..!!..u have the courage to come out in public forum and disclose the truth.!
She may be considered the best teacher by many, but to me, sorry, she was not (I am giving in past tense, as I don’t know how she is in the class now). She has created fear in many, but in my humble opinion, in addition to fear, she should have created that passion for her students to learn. She was biased to her “favorite” students. She may possess a wealth of knowledge, but may be more suitable for guiding research scholars. In my opinion, her USP is “creating fear in students, screaming at the top of her voice, favoritism, fearless, knowledge repository, unapproachable”. Having said these, I admire her passion for her subjects, commitment towards work, enthusiasm, willingness to help (if and when one becomes closer to her), etc.
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