It's easy to get lost and, perhaps, sufficiently creeped out in the basement of Krieger Hall. Its lights are dim, its hallways narrow and misleading. Exposed piping is not yet passé.
They say there are labs down there; a walk through it will evoke memories of, for History majors, black and white pictures of Cold War-era testing facilities or if you're studying English, the setting of a certain Mary Shelley novel.
Keep walking, for there is a figurative light at the end of the quite literal tunnel.
Shortly before the door to the Laverty Lounge sits an alcove, in which doors lead to three different offices. Take the one to the right. Inside, you'll find a bright room whose walls seem to flex under the weight of vibrant decorations: a portrait of the Taj Mahal at sunrise, a marble plaque with engraved words in both Hindi and English, and a multitude of trinkets, likely accumulated over the course of their owner's storied career as an educator and academic leader.
The owner of these trinkets and the inhabitant of this office is Uma Saini, the mother of Hopkins's Hindi department, the sole professor of said department, and one of the most influential figures in the sphere of language education at the University.
Since arriving at Hopkins just over a decade ago, she has revolutionized the teaching of foreign languages here, pioneering and expanding the Language Teaching Center during her eight-year tenure as its director. The dignified radiance of her personality accentuates that of her office. Her presence is matronly but striking, her Indian accent gentle but commanding.
Chances are, she might offer you a cup of tea.
Her presence is so indelibly meshed with the Hopkins academic community that one might have trouble recognizing the fact that her career as an academic spanned decades and continents before she arrived at Homewood in September 2000.
For Saini, it seems, education is an embodied trait. Before leaving India for the United States, she had accrued both a Bachelors' degree with honors and a Master's degree in Sanskrit Language and Literature (with minors in English and history in the former).
Her teaching career came prematurely. By the time she received a doctorate at Agra University, she had already held a professorship in Sanskrit at Delhi University in India's capitol city. She was the youngest professor in the university's employ.
She was 23 years old.
It was at that age that she made the journey to Washington, D.C., hoping to establish a new life with her new husband. Opportunity came into fruition when she received a teaching position at American University. Her domain at American lasted for twenty-five years, culminating in 1999.
Counting the number of professional hats she wore during her quarter-century there proves difficult, if only due to the largeness of that number. In conjunction to her teaching of Hindi and Sanskrit Literature, she studied linguistics and English as a Second Language, held administrative positions within the university's language department and served as an academic advisor. Before leaving the university twelve years ago, she was the interim dean of the undergraduate chapter of the university's Kogod School of Business.
"I did a lot at American, and I loved my time there," she said.
All the while, she returned home each night to North Potomac, Maryland, where she donned two more hats: those of wife and mother. Today, Saini's husband is retired and her son and daughter are in their thirties. Meanwhile, she commutes twice per week from North Potomac to Maryland, a good two-hour drive in rush hour traffic.
Until about four years ago, she made the drive twice per day, once in the morning, once at night. Now, she sets up camp during the week in a small house near Homewood, permitting her to devote herself fully to her work here. She returns home each weekend.
During the week, however, her attention to Hopkins is almost omnipresent. Faculty and students alike acknowledge both her efforts and legacy, though the two are intrinsically intertwined, with enduring respect. So it has been since she first arrived at Homewood more than ten years ago.
"Hopkins found me," she said with a laugh.
She came to establish Hopkins' Hindi program, per the recommendation of Dr. Vijay Gambhir, director of Hindi studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She made the decision to move her professional life from Washington to Baltimore in 1999; she taught her first class at Homewood in September 2000.
Considering her resume, it should come as no surprise that she soon surpassed her role as a Hindi professor. In 2002, she became the director of the Language Teaching Center, which facilitates the education of non-Romance languages: Chinese, Japanese, Kiswahili and Russian, to name Hopkins' most popular.
She also assumed the responsibility of single-handedly revising the summer English as a Second Language (ESL) program, which offers English education to teaching assistants, nurses, doctors, and information technology staff in the Hopkins network.
Prior to her arrival, the program's fate looked grim.
"It was on the brink of death, and we brought it back," she said. Her use of the plural pronoun is a Saini trademark, exuding her modesty.
Today, the ESL program serves the university community on whole, holding the responsibility of preparing international teaching assistants to teach in English.
"We teach them the language, but also the culture. We try to make them feel more comfortable, more confident," she said.
Saini's career as a teacher is perennial, but she doesn't seem to mind. Meanwhile, universal acclaim bombards her modesty.
She is a matriarch of Hindi education not just at Hopkins, but across the country - even the government knows it.
She sits on the selection committee of the Critical Language Scholarship, an award issued annually by the State Department that permits American college students to spend a summer studying abroad.
The Department of Education recently solicited her services to strategize and author a textbook for intermediate-level Hindi - a book that will soon be the national precedent for Hindi education in America.
The accolades are just as copious at Homewood. She is the director of the Interfaith Center and has a history of leadership on the university's Ethics Committee. And most recently, this past Monday, Hopkins placed her on the interview committee to select the university's hopeful Fulbright Scholars.
Upon the wane of her directorship of the Language Teaching Center, her colleagues threw Saini a surprise party, catered by Kumari, her favorite Indian eatery in Baltimore, located on North Charles Street.
At this party, she received two gifts -a scrapbook and a marble plaque with the Hindi and English words for beauty, purity and wisdom engraved within.
Both of these items now sit among the trinkets in her office.
Other universities seem to be jealous of Saini's contributions to Hopkins.
In 2005, Cornell University invited Saini to deliver the Baccalaureate address to that year's graduating class.
"I was scared to death, and it took me two months to write my speech, but somehow it worked," she said.
In the weeks following the ceremony, she received a letter from the CEO of Proctor and Gamble, whose son graduated from Cornell that year. The letter, she said, was one of unbridled praise.
In spite of the countless recognitions she has amassed, however, only one has permeated her humility.
"I was in the parking lot one day at American, when I taught there, and a highly distinguished colleague stopped me and said," Saini paused for emphasis with a smile dancing across her face.
"That it was like I was the ambassador of India," she finished.
This colleague, she said, personally knew the real ambassador of India.
"If I have one accomplishment as a professor, it'll be that I represented India well. So it felt good to hear that," she said, still smiling brightly.
