Drs. Rabindra and Protima Roy are well-known faculty members at Drury University, a small campus tucked away in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks.
Rabindra, a chemistry professor, and Protima, an education professor, have taught at the school since the 1970s, earning numerous accolades as educators and community leaders.
However, their greatest impact over the past decade might be in their native India, where the pair has almost single-handedly educated a generation of village and tribal students in their home state of West Bengal.
In 1995, the Roys, using money they had saved since coming to the United States, established the Hem Sheela Model School in Rabindra’s hometown of Durgapur, a steel-producing city located about 100 miles from Kolkata. The school, named after Rabindra’s father Hem and mother Sheela, was designed to provide higher education opportunities for children of all economic and caste backgrounds.
“We wanted to give something back to our motherland and to our hometown,” says Rabindra Roy. “We found out that education is the only way to improve someone’s career.”
The 3,300-student school has 125 teachers and has established a formal education partnership with Drury University. Some of Drury’s trustees, including John Beuerlein, the chairman of the board, have contributed money to the Roys’ education efforts.
Drury and Hem Sheela also have an exchange program that allows students from both schools to study at each other’s campuses for a semester or more. Roy says the school epitomizes 21st century education and has helped to foster personal relationships between young Indians and their American counterparts.
