Faculty biography - Sucheta Paranjpe
Sucheta Paranjpe is a person who loves languages . She happily dedicated all her academic life to learn and teach various languages, as she firmly believes that Language is the greatest invention mankind has ever made.
After graduating from Ferguson College, Pune, majoring in Sanskrit ( the classical Indian language ), with Mathematics and Philosophy as her subsidiary subjects, she joined University of Pune for her post graduation in Sanskrit. Doing research for her doctoral thesis was an inevitable step. All through her educational career, she always topped the University and won many prizes and scholarships. She was also offered a post-doctoral scholarship at Harward University, but could not accept that for personal reasons. She taught Sanskrit at the Tilak Maharashtra University in Pune and was a visiting faculty at the Leipzig University in Germany. Sucheta has done Diploma courses in Russian and German and has studied Indology. This kindled her interest in linguistics and that inspired her to teach Indian languages to non-Indian students. She taught for many off-campus study programs from the United States, Japan, Romania, etc. Students from all over the world have been tutored in Indian languages by her.
And this is how Sucheta got connected to the ACM India program in 1986. She started teaching Marathi to the students who came to Pune. Teaching is her passion and teaching is what she loves the most. Many ACM students from the past have come back to India to learn advanced Marathi from her, and a couple of them hold Doctorates in Marathi-related topics and are working as professors in the United States. This gives her a great sense of achievement and pride.
ACM initiated a project to create a Marathi textbook for the India program. Sucheta is one of the co-authors of Marathi in Context, a book which has been used as a text for almost 15 years. She is now writing another updated workbook for ACM students. She has translated some books from English into Marathi, such as The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery and Story of a Death Foretold by Garcia Marquez. Her other publications are mostly related to Sanskrit studies.
Sucheta has been a visiting faculty for Marathi with ACM since the 1980's. In 2008, she was asked to work as the Director of the ACM India program, and her long association with and involvement in the evolution of the program urged her to accept the assignment. Presently, she is both the Director and the language teacher at ACM India. She eagerly looks forward to a continuing and meaningful association with ACM students for years to come.