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Class of 2010
College of Arts and Science
Hometown: Ooltewah, TN
In high school, Rachna focused her efforts on tutoring inner-city children at an after school site called the One Room Drop-In School (ORDIS). Every afternoon after school, she and some of her classmates would spend a couple of hours helping the children with their homework and building lasting relationships at the same time. Through a grant program at her high school, she proposed and had two separate grants funded. At the end of her freshman year, her school funded a grant that gave her the opportunity to teach the children at ORDIS about bullying and the negative effects it inflicted upon the victim and the bully. Her second grant, which was funded during her junior year, allowed her to teach a cultural class focusing on Indian culture and traditions.
Through her high school community service program, she had the opportunity to travel to Asheville, NC, and help people outside of her hometown. She went to Asheville four times while in high school during her fall and winter breaks. While in Asheville, she and her group stayed at a homeless shelter and helped the staff clean and organize the building. They also spent a couple of nights in Cherokee, NC, where they volunteered at a home for abandoned Cherokee children. With this same service program, she traveled to Kingston, Jamaica during the spring break of her junior year. Before going to Jamaica, she and the other participants on the trip raised over $30,000 that went towards funding the education of young, underprivileged children in Kingston. In Kingston, she volunteered at a home for abandoned and abused children, a home for the aged, and a squatters’ community.
At Vanderbilt, Rachna continues to tutor young children as a volunteer with Vanderbuddies. She also helps young children learn science through fun experiments with VSVS. She is currently a board member of ScholarBowl, a quiz bowl that was founded by a fellow Ingram scholar. This past year, she was on the community service committee for Vanderbilt Student Government, and helped plan various campus-wide service activities. Last spring, she participated in Alternative Spring Break and traveled to St. Louis, MO, where she worked at a home for the elderly and an after-school tutoring site for young children.
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