It was the 2018 annual social event of Comparitive, International, & Development Education Center (CIDEC) when the Director Dr. Kathy Bickmore encouraged Neelofar Ahmed to develop an interest group to foster academic engagement for and in the context of South Asia. Started as Neelofar’s brainchild, the South Asia Interest Group was initiated at the Joseph P. Farrell Student Research Symposium in 2019 with the ambition to develop collaboration between researchers, scholars, faculty, and students whose research scholarship highlights the socio-economic, development, and educational challenges within South Asia and its diaspora across the world.