In Case You Missed It: Nilanjana Dasgupta’s 2025 Plenary Lecture on Changing the Wallpaper and Creating a Better World

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Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta speaking at the 2025 Plenary Lecture, Photo: Grace Chai

On Thursday, October 9 at 5 p.m. in the Student Union Ballroom, Commonwealth Honors College hosted Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta for the 2025 Plenary Lecture. The CHC Plenary Lecture is an opportunity for students in Honors 201H: Ideas That Change the World and other interested students to gather together for a pertinent lecture that connects to the topics being covered in Honors 201H.

Dasupta is a provost professor of psychology at UMass and the director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences. As a young student from India entering college in the US, Dasgupta had intended to be a biology major at Smith College. However, when she started to become aware of the differences in her experience from her American peers and classmates, she decided to pivot. 

“That experience raised a lot of confusion, rage, and ununderstood emotions, and the pursuit of psychology was an attempt to try and make sense of what that was and how to change it for the better.”

Dasgupta opened her lecture with a story of two girls: both 10 year old girls with single mothers invested in their futures, the only difference being that one girl grew up middle class and the other grew up poor. She went on to describe how over time, though these students started out in very similar situations, small advantages and disadvantages compounded over time, creating very different outcomes for the girls by the time they turned 30.

From there, Dasgupta recounted the four types of wallpaper in her book and how they related to the story.

1. The physical design of your local environment can prevent or aid your access to information networks and sharing, such as being connected with a tutor after getting a bad grade in a class.
2. The tacit knowledge you have to navigate instructions can either help you understand the rules of the game or provide more roadblocks, such as knowing when extra support is needed, and where to get it.
3. The popular stories in your culture can either show you success models or serve to diminish your efforts.
4. The exposure you have to people in high places can help increase your “motivation, inspiration, and persistence” if you see yourself represented in them—and it can have the opposite effect if not.

Photo: Grace Chai

Then, Dasgupta launched into an explanation of how we can all change the wallpaper. These points are key to approaching social change in a more holistic way.

• Challenge your assumptions about how to create change (focus on building trusted relationships instead of changing minds)
• Create environments where you can interact with people of different backgrounds
• Open gates instead of being a gatekeeper
• Expand your definition of talent to allow it to address adversity and resilience
• Stay aware of the three R’s and how they affect people of different backgrounds (rules, resources, recognition)

Assessing the Importance of the Wallpapers in Living Learning Communities and in Mentoring 

Dasgupta also used two examples of changing the wallpaper in practice from her research. She explained that she focuses on STEM research because it provides a path for “economic mobility” for lower class people.

In the first example, she showed the impact of Living Learning Communities (LLC) for first-generation college students in biomedical sciences. This means that these students had shared dorms, small biology courses together, brokered relationships with faculty, and visible role models of first-generation speakers in their classes. As it turned out, the students in the LLC had increased senses of belonging and decreased anxiety. Furthermore, their grades were increased from a B- to a B+, and they had much higher retention in bioscience majors (85% versus 66%).

Photo: Theo Nims

The second example focused on female engineering majors at UMass. Because only 15-20% of engineering majors at UMass are women, it’s really important that this population is supported. These students were randomly assigned one of three categories—female mentor, male mentor, or no mentor—during their first year, and then tracked in a number of areas throughout their college experience and beyond.

What they found was that feelings of belonging for female engineering majors with female mentors increased over time, while the results for male mentors/no mentor decreased. This also applied to graduate aspirations, retention of their major, confidence in engineering, and self-reported mental health. It also made it more likely they would secure an engineering internship and graduate with a STEM major.

Dasupta explained, “Learning that roadmap early in the game, in that transition period to navigate this environment plays a key role in student success, not just in that period of time, but over time.” It also showcases the importance of having role models that look like you to inspire you to achieve similar success.

Finally, it was time for Dasgupta’s favorite part of the lecture: the Q&A portion. Three students asked questions—about her opinion on affirmative action, how to maintain motivation when working for social change, and how to gain greater cultural awareness as a college student without traveling abroad. Dasgupta shared some of the positives and negatives of affirmative action, that working with local groups can be a good way to uphold your motivation, and a recommendation to start book or movie discussion groups to expand your cultural horizons.

Dasgupta concluded her talk with six takeaways “to guide action for positive change” that we can all incorporate into our daily lives.

1. Step back and observe your local environment
2. It’s easier to see the wallpaper when we step outside it
3. Local action has more traction
4. Change works better in collective settings
5. Prioritize action on material matters over symbolic matters
6. Change is slow—a relay race, not a sprint, not a marathon

At the end of the plenary lecture, Honors College Dean Mari Castañeda facilitated a raffle for a few signed copies of Dasgupta’s book, Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities. Copies of this book are available in the UMass library as well.

Raffle winners with Nilanjana 'Buju' Dasgupta and Dean Castañeda