About Us
Learn about our history, mission and values
2022
Mentoring Program
Character Arc launches a 13-week mentorship program for STEM students.
2022
Svadhi becomes Character Arc
Svadhi changes name to Character Arc to become a holistic student success organization.
2020
Beta version launches
Svadhi launches the beta version of the direct admissions platform (beta version) to support enrollment processes.
2020
COVID-19 Risk Based Student Support Survey
Svadhi launches COVID-19 Risk Based Student Support Survey for use during the global pandemic.
2020
Student Development and Retention
Svadhi develops the Assessment to measure Civic (Interpersonal) and Individual (Intrapersonal ) student character for used in Student Development and Retention.
2020
SAMAs customized based on results
The Svadhi Character Assessments for Undergraduate Admissions and Graduate Admissions are released.
2019
First results from pilot study
Svadhi completes the Pilot Study and releases results. Performance Character Skills are validated for Graduate Students.
2019
Next generation of SAMA
The next generation of Character Assessments are developed. Svadhi's Character Universe expanded to 21.
2019
Pilot Study
The pilot study is initiated with University of Florida - School of Veterinary Medicine.
2019
Svadhi Character Assessments
The first generation of Svadhi Character Assessments are developed and validated. The four Performance Character Skills include: Grit, Collaboration, Conscientiousness and Adaptability.
2018
Svadhi is born
The idea for an equitable enrollment process was pitched at Lehigh University Eureka Pitch Competition and won first place.
Our Values
Our mission is to empower those, who aspire to achieve upward mobility.
We harness the power of character to advance equity and transparency within higher education.
We believe that considering various dimensions of a student’s character skills and combining them with the character of an higher education institution will the enrollment process more equitable. It will also lead to students having a college experience and allow institutions to develop students as more engaged members of society.
Our Team
Shalin J. Shah
Founder & CEO
Nils Myszkowski , Ph.D.
Product Development/ Psychometrician/ Validation Consultant
Our Interns
Ethan Kamen is a senior at Syracuse University majoring in Supply chain and Finance. He is passionate about business development and using data and analytics to make a difference. When he is not working or studying, you can find him watching or playing basketball.
Ethan Kamen
Business Development Intern
Computer Science honors student-athlete at Pace University. Member of Pace University Swimming & Diving Team. International student from Poland.
Marta Hasny
Front-End Intern
I have 5+ years of working experience in data science. I am currently in my final semester of masters of Science in data science. I like to be hardworking, honest and technical person with hands on experience at work. I have worked on Neuromarketing and student retention projects for Svadhi. I was part of the team which deployed Svadhi first model to AWS sagemaker. I have experience working on end to end kubeflow pipelines in all cloud platforms.
Nitin Pathania
Predictive Team Lead
I am Surge Zhu. I am a senior at Lehigh University. I major in business information systems and have interests in business analytics and information technology. On campus, I work as a resident assistant and peer health promoter. I like music, board games, and learning a new language.
Surge Zhu
Analytics Intern
Shania Paul is a rising senior at the University of Texas at Austin, studying Electrical and Computer Engineering with a focus in Software Engineering and Design. She worked on the front-end development team at Svadhi and hopes to find a full time job working in web development after she graduates. She also loves to dance and is currently the captain of her dance team at UT.
Shania Paul
Front-End Intern
Charles Inwald is a master's degree student at Lehigh University, studying Computer Science. He completed both back-end and front-end development work at Svadhi. He will pursue opportunities in front-end (UI/UX) development upon completion of his M.S. degree in December 2020.
Charles Inwald
Back-End Intern
Ayushi Ambekar is a second-year CS major at UC Davis. She worked mainly as a front-end intern at Svadhi, and helped build the website!
Ayushi Ambekar
Front-End Intern
Sydney Crowley
Product Development Intern