In the midst of a lot of excitement and anticipation, the Student Alumni Relations Cell kicked off its much awaited 5th Phase of the coveted Alumni Student Mentorship Program, with an orientation on the 25th of January 2012 in the IRCC Auditorium at IIT Bombay.
The ASMP is a unique initiative of SARC wherein various Alumni of IIT Bombay are made mentors to current students on the basis of similarity in interest and chosen career paths. The mentors can then guide their mentees on all matters relating to their careers and address any doubts and uncertainties that they may have regarding the path they should choose and how to walk that path.
With more than a hundred students attending, the ASMP team kicked off their orientation with a brief address by Mr. Suresh Bhagwat (Electrical Engineering, batch of 1974). He answered a few pertinent questions about ASMP, such as what students should expect out of ASMP, How they should go about achieving their expectations and how the program was a great opportunity for students to establish a lifelong bond with their mentors. “It is the need that motivates the child, so in order to fully avail of ASMP one must understand the need for ASMP. Mentors are here to tell you how things can go wrong, and to help you understand the limitations and opportunities of your talent.”
He was followed by Mr. Manoj Kunkalienkar (BTech in Electrical Engineering-1981, MTech in Computer Science And Engineering-1983) who delved deeper into the mentor-mentee relationship. He said “Mentors are basically good listeners, and they are here to help you students. They are here to help you correct your course in case you stray from your path. They are not here to judge you.”
This was followed by a brief Question and Answer session, where students put any questions that they had forward to the alumni. While quoting the statement ‘Know what you want, then make a plan to get what you want, and then stick to that plan to achieve what you want’ a student asked “What do we do if we no longer feel that the plan that we have formulated and embarked upon is correct ?” Mr. Bhagwat replied that “One cannot just make Plan A and sit back, he must make Plan B, Plan C and so on. If one plan fails, then you must find one that will succeed”.
The previous phases of ASMP have been great successes, greatly due to the efforts put in by both the mentors and the mentees. According to Mr. Kunkalienkar, the Mentees play an especially important role in making the program a success. “The onus of deriving what they want from this relationship is upon the mentees.”
Hundreds of students have registered for the current phase of ASMP. The ASMP will formally start off on the 11th – 12th of February with a mentor-mentee ‘Break the Ice’ session that will allow them to begin the guiding process and get better acquainted with each other.
IIT Bombay in 1958
A distinctive view about IITB and its life exists amid the student society of the 80s and today. It is very apparent that the situations and the resources available are very different, but it is human tendency to still venture into that line of comparison between the times then and now. The fact that the Institute Alumni Reunion every year provides a platform for these discussions to resurface is virtually unexplored, and in fact if made proper use of, can bring about radical changes in the thought process of both the alumni and the student.
Let me first start with what I learnt last year, when for the first time, I had a long and deep interaction with the Batch of ’85. As part of a highly interactive email thread, I came to know of the views of various alumni in a very organised and logical way.
The conversation started with the following masterpiece:
“As much as the IIT of the past gladdened the heart, the IIT Bombay of today seemed unrecognizable and alien.
1) The hostels are so dilapidated, they look practically decrepit. The much vaunted Indian economic boom evidently by-passed IITB’s hostels. Our rooms were a place where we regenerated and recovered, reflected and dreamed. Each room was a unique expression of the inhabitant’s persona. Stuffing 2 students in such a small room robs the space of its dignity and violates the individual’s privacy.
2) The focus of the few students I met (who may not describe the population) was around academics and getting ahead in life. All very relevant in today’s world no doubt. But very different from what I recall of the IIT of the 80s and before. The focus during our times was mostly about discovery and exploration. The coming of age amongst a sea of brilliance; of being inspired by classmates and hostel mates who wanted to try out as many new things as possible; and being amazed at the repeated ingenuity, inventiveness and sheer guts of so many around us. Academics were important and taken in stride, but rarely was it the primary reason for being. That’s what made IITians special. In its current avatar, IITB seems no different from the countless other engineering colleges in the country. It’s hard to digest this new reality and to acknowledge being a part of it.”
Amid all the opinion sharing, I joined the discussion with great enthusiasm, trying to give a current student’s view:-.
1) Of course, putting two students per room is atrocious, but the IITB authorities have no other choice. Infrastructure facilities cannot be changed overnight, while the student intake has. In fact, academics itself, the prime concern of our being, is suffering. Lectures in the LT are still OK, but given the quality of acoustics in the Convocation Hall, they should never be held there. No doubt the faculty and labs are among the best available in the country, but there too there is significant room for improvement, which is evident from IITs ranking amongst other colleges in the world.
2) Social behaviour has changed with the advent of technology – personal laptops, music systems etc. Seclusion has definitely taken in, life is more individualistic. Virtual life on the internet limits social interaction. But I believe this has more to do with the generation. Parents of older IITians who didn’t even have a radio would also have said how children wasted their time on radios listening to cricket instead of playing it in the streets. It’s the same as how we teens look with disgust at present day’s cartoons on TV. The fact that kids today enjoy it and find our stuff boring reflects how our likings are different from theirs. Agreement on what’s interesting and what’s not cannot be made across generations.
But when I discussed all of this with the batch of ’85, I got the unanimous answer that most alumni agreed that they gained significantly from their STAY at IIT, and NOT JUST from the LECTURES they attended at IIT. “We too had more than our share of good, bad and indifferent professors. Most interaction was limited to tutorials, instead of on the spot discussion during lectures. The lab equipment varied from good to terrible. Most lab results and graphs did not even correlate to theory. We certainly didn’t have state of the art facilities. Getting computer time involved begging, pleading and sometimes even stealing.”
“Students usually stayed in the same hostel for the length of their stay in IIT. Hostel, Institute and Gymkhana events, including Mood Indigo, were organised and coordinated without email or cell phones. External dialling from the hostel was limited to PCO/hostel… And each student had the liberty of finding the location of one that worked!
But, we still took the pains to maintain our hostels a lot better than the situation today. And, we still managed to reach the external market for buying vegetables at the cheapest rates for the hostel messes.” After all that, it was these students who went on to establish IIT’s brand globally.
In fact, the snail mail was all that existed to keep in touch with friends, contrary to plethora of means and resources today. They did not have Google to do research. People used engineering indexes in the library and hoped that the journal they were looking for would be where it was supposed to be. “We didn’t like this inefficiency. So our generation invented internet to make your life easy. What are you guys going to do and tell folks like you 25 years later?” There was silence!
“What we learned at IIT was a lot more than academics. We learned leadership. We developed a very high adversity quotient. We developed positive attitude. We learned innovation. We learned to think. We learned to take action. We learned to control our own destiny. We learned to fight. We learned to stand up on our own feet. We learned to succeed! And none of this is taught in any classroom at IIT!”
IIT Bombay today
The IITB of tomorrow has to be shaped in this particular spirit. The willingness, the strength to fight, the capability and the potential to make things work in even the most dire situations is what an IITian is known all over the world for. It is this uniqueness that needs to be built upon so that the motto of IIT Bombay: Gyanam Paramam Dhyeyam (Knowledge is the ultimate goal) be held high.
After months of preparation, tons of E-mails, hundreds of Phone calls and gallons of litres of coffee, the Student Alumni Meet (SAM), organised by the Student Alumni Relations Cell (SARC) in co-operation with the Dean–Alumni and Corporate Relations finally came to pass on the 24th and 25th of September.
The vision behind SAM that got the cogwheels rotating was the need for an event where students could freely interact with Alumni and gain from their wisdom. Until now, students were rarely given any chance to interact with their older and wiser counterparts. Alumni also had very few opportunities to give back to their Alma mater, usually limited to giving funding to their hostels, and had very little interaction with students at large. SAM’s goal was to introduce a number of Student Centric programs that allowed a large amount of networking and interaction among students and Alumni.
So after enormous amount of preparation, the event that promised so much to all involved kicked off on the cloudy late morning of the 24th of September. The arrival of the alumni marked the beginning of the first event of SAM, the ASMP Lunch. The ASMP – Alumni Student Mentorship program is another of SARC’s initiatives wherein alumni from all walks of life mentor students that harbour identical interests as them and want to pursue careers similar to their own. The Lunch provided the first opportunity for the mentors and the mentees to familiarise themselves with each other and develop a certain rapport amongst each other within an informal environment.
One of the highlights of SAM was the Beyond the Horizons interactive session. Held in the swanky, shiny new VMCC auditorium, the BTH featured alumni that have chosen careers that are radically different from the norm. In the face of peer, parental pressure and an uncertain future, they have chosen to follow their hearts and have risen to great heights. 
It featured eminent sports entrepreneur Saumil Majumdar, social activist Ravi kuchimanchi, and healthcare professionals Ankur Pegu and Sundeep Kapila. The students were exposed to possibilities and ideas hitherto unknown to them, allowing them “expand their horizons”. The aim of the event was allow students to gain from people who had trodden “the road not taken” and help them understand that even such unorthodox careers can lead to a happy and successful life. Wrapping up, the most important piece of advice of all from Mr. Majumdar, “If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, make sure your spouse is a rich person!”
With so many alumni together in one place, SARC decided to make good use of the sheer industrial horsepower in one place. The Industry Defined Problems is a novel idea which was pitched to the alumni in a short 45 minutes session. A short presentation introduced the basic idea, wherein industrial projects would be taken up by IIT students. Later, when the students complete the project and the industry finds their solution viable, they would be given monetary remuneration. Many problems regarding this idea were addressed, including how communication between students and the company would be carried out, how students would be chosen for these projects and how the research could be kept confidential. Finally it was decided that although the idea had a few kinks in the works, it could be definitely be a great way forward.
Taking advantage of the large amount of wisdom and experience that was gathered together in one place, SARC organised (Tete-a-Tete) Networking Sessions between students and alumni from different kind of sectors namely IT and Softwares, Finance and banking, Consultancy, and FMCG. These interactive sessions allowed students to ask sector specific questions and get a general feel of the current and future situation in each sector. From required resume points and skill sets, to the kind of work hours and lifestyle choices, all doubts were addressed by alumni that had “been there and seen it all”.
The final event on SAM’s itinerary, but arguably the most anticipated, was the Panel Discussion on the Role of Positions of Responsibilities (POR) in a student’s life. The panel was composed of eminent alumni such as Anip Sharma, Vardan Kabra and S.N.Vaidya. The faculty representative was Prof. Kundu. The students were represented by Jhonny Jha, Institute-Student Mentorship program Head. The panel stressed that academics are the most important fact of a student’s life, but POR’s are also useful since they teach students leadership and people skills, which are not learnt from the academic curricula. To quote Jhonny “Academics are the 1, and your extra-curricula’s are the zeros you put after that 1. Unless you have that 1, you have just a bunch of zeros.” After an hour of intense to and fro between the panellists, the session was opened to the students wherein they were allowed to question the panellists themselves. What followed was an intense interrogation of the panellists, and the discussion varied from which kinds of POR’s should be followed to even the recent motion by the government scrapping JEE! All in all, it proved to be a highly stimulating and thought provoking session.
The first edition of SAM proved to be a highly successful and well appreciated one. Many alumni applauded the vision and efforts put in to make this event a success.
“Wonderful opportunity to connect back with people, wish this grows in strength and depth of engagement in years to come” -Rino Raj-Alumnus IITB.
“A wonderful initiative and extremely well executed. I just wish we had these sessions when we were students here” -Harishwar Subramanium-Alumnus IITB
Many cheers to the SARC team for organising such an event and we are eagerly waiting for the next edition of SAM!!
As students, not yet exposed to the realities of the world outside, all of us go through periods of uncertainty regarding our future and what we should do to make it the best possible one for ourselves. We often feel uneasy about our choices, and are left wondering whether the decisions we are taking, is the best of what we can do. Questions regarding path to walk on, which companies to apply to, the growth and prospects in that sector become the ideas that hound everyone all day long, as we approach our year of graduation.
In order to help students through this phase and help guide them along, The Student Alumni Relations Cell (SARC) of IIT-Bombay is conducting the Student Alumni Meet or SAM on the 24th and 25th September 2011, to provide the students with a chance to interact with the alumni of the institute, people who went through a similar phase as to what we are undergo now, to gain from their experience and wisdom, and make better informed choices. With this idea in mind, we bring forward the First Ever Student Alumni Meet.
The events that will be taking place in during SAM include-
- Break the Ice (ASMP Mentor lunch): – Kicking off this year Alumni Student Mentorship Program (ASMP), this will be the first opportunity for all students that have registered for this year’s ASMP to meet their mentors. Around 60-70 mentors are expected to attend the event.
- Tete-a-Tete (Networking Sessions):- Alumni from various sectors like FMCG, Consultancy, Banking, IT and software will enter into an interactive session with final year students about different aspects like Job satisfaction, Economic growth of the sector, employee growth, working culture, future prospects etc.
- Panel Discussion- A panel of 4 including alumni and professors shall enter into a constructive debate on the Importance of Position of Responsibility (PoR’s) in a one’s life, a pressing student centric topic. The discussion shall feature the likes of Vardan Kabra, founder of Fountainhead school, Anip Sharma Principal- the Parthenon group and Prof. T.Kundu.
- Beyond The Horizons- Students get to interact with alumni that made “less-conventional” careers choices like Sports enthusiasts, Social activists, Entrepreneurs, Economists and learn from their unique experiences to help enrich their own ideas about what they may pursue after their graduation. After all, all trends start with choices of an individual; someone has to take the first step.
With above events lined up in an exhaustive schedule over two days of a weekend, SAM passes on the baton of “success” from our rich pool of alumni to the students. The sharing of knowledge amongst a family – IIT Bombay helps build stronger student-alumni relations.
So do not miss out on SAM- “Catching up with our ex” this weekend!!
Further details at http://www.sarc-iitb.org/sam
The ringing of telephones, the chattering of conversations is now over, as the 13th IITB Phonathon, organised by the Student Alumni Relations Cell (SARC) of IIT-Bombay from the 5th to the 11th of August 2011 comes to an end. Regarded as a great success, it was the first of its kind Skype Phonathon. This time the whole process was done online using the Skype software, instead of the old fashioned way using telephones. It allowed the organisers to use the already existing LAN network within the institute, instead of laying down new phone lines.
What is a phonathon? In a phonathon, IIT students call various alumni of the institute in order to introduce them to various activities and functions happening in the institute and see whether they would be interested in taking part in them, as well as to collect donations from them for the institute.
Another innovation that set the 13th phonathon apart from other phonathons was the use of an improved interface, designed by SARC’s own web team, which greatly facilitated the students in their role. It allowed the students to keep track of all the Alumni they had to call.
It provided facility to know the alumni from which reply was awaited as well as record the responses of the successfully contacted alumni. Allowing the students easier information control as well as a better data managing device for the organisers, the interface, available online at
http://phonathon.sarc-iitb.org was a great factor in making the 13th phonathon a resounding success.
With the managers of SARC calling it a ‘
stud’ phonathon, the 13th phonaton is widely received as the best phonathon ever. Its success was on both fronts, the student as well as the alumni. The number of students that took part in the phonathon was the largest ever (around 35) in the history of phonathons.
A prominent thing to note was the vast diversity in the participation, from freshmen to fifth year undergraduates, as well as PhD and MTech’s, all came to take part in the phonathon. Among Alumni, as many as 110 alumni were contacted, out of which over 70 showed interest in taking part in the Alumni Student Mentorship Program (ASMP) and 75 in attending the decennial celebrations of the IITB Alumni Association at IIT-Bombay. Also, over 50 alumni showed interest in donating funds to the Alumni Association of IIT Bombay.
So for conducting the most successful Phonathon for SARC ever, hats off to the Team SARC-2011.
On the pleasant evening of the 3rd of August, interspersed with a few sporadic showers , The Dean Alumni and Corporate Relations at IIT-Bombay, in co-ordination with the Student Alumni Relations Cell organised an interactive session on the meaning and understanding of success with the distinguished alumnus of IIT Bombay, Mr Avi Nash at the IRCC auditorium in IIT Bombay.
Mr Avi Nash is an alumnus of IIT Bombay from the batch of 75. He is the director and founder of Avi nash LLC, a global management consulting firm. Earlier, he was a partner at Goldman Sachs and Co. He was awarded a B.Tech degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1975.
Justifying his roots as an IIT-ian, and their love for everything mathematical, he showed his own ‘equation’ for success, that he had derived from his own extensive experience.
Sustained Success = Values * Attitude * Aptitude * Approach
S^2 = V*(A^3)
Mr. Avi Nash stressed upon the importance not of success, but of sustained success. He also said that following moral values were very important for someone to stay happy. One may be able to achieve success, but will be evaded by happiness if one does not stick to a moral code.
Reminiscing about his days at Goldman Sachs, he recounted during his early days there, about how everyone at the company had a shot at becoming a partner in the company depending upon thier performances in job. He was pretty sure that he would land the job of a partner, but instead, he was not even considered among the possible candidates. Instead, one of his juniors from another department, one who had mentored himself, was made partner. This incident struck him like a brick. At this point he could easily have left Goldman Sachs. But looking back now, as a retired partner in the firm, he knows that had he done so, he would have been very unhappy and dissatisfied. Using this example, Mr.Avi Nash brought out one very major aspect of success. A persons service should be to the job and to the company, and not to himself. One should not do the job for what he gains from it, but for simply doing the job itself.
Ever since he was young, his father told him that his aim in life should be to take his company to great heights, for that was the definition of success. But after slogging away for a large part of his life, Mr. Avi Nash realised that this was not what he defined as success, and this wasn’t what made him happy. That was what he asked everyone else to do as well. One should set his own, achievable goals, and strive to achieve them. He should not be influenced by what others say or are doing. That is how one grows to achieve success while staying happy as well.
Luck is also a very important part of one’s success in life. It is better to be lucky than smart, and he too was very thankful to have such a loving wife, who put her own career on hold so he could move forward. All in all a great session offering much to take away from, no one could sum it up better than the speaker himself.
Today is the FIRST day of the REST of your life!
With the aim of mending the broken link between students and alumni, Student Alumni Relations Cell (SARC) launched Alumni Student Mentorship Program (ASMP).
ASMP had conducted a triumphant orientation on 5th of March, 2011 for the all those students who have been allotted mentors in its second phase.
The orientation has succeeded in achieving its purpose for organizing it. The aims of the orientation were to convey to the students the structure and execution of the program.
We invited two of our very own esteemed alumni to come down interact with the students to give their valuable suggestions and their views about the program.
Fortunately they have been with us even in the First Phase, so they were up to it in conveying to the students what they expect from them.
Mr. Ashok Kalbag from the 1974 batch and Mr. Ravi Kishore from the 2005 batch, were the two alumni who had many tales to tell the students about their respective times.
Mr. Ravi Kishore, alumnus from the department of Aerospace Engineering speaks,” This program bridges the outside and inside world. The alumni are here not to road-map your journey into the future, but just to make a few corrections. Student-alumnus networking will provide specific information from outside world and to check if your decisions suit your interest.” In a lighter vein he regards,” We are your friends with a little more experience.”
He concluded his words quoting that Experience is what we get when we don’t get what we want.
Mr. Ashok Kalbag says,” Mentoring is a subset of education, preparing you for your future. Education should be based on diverse experience and this is when the alumni come into the picture. They can share their experiences which can be used for better decision making. A student must follow his passion and he will be successful or can expect success only if he takes some risk in accomplishing his works.
“In the entire student development analogy, mentor is also gaining a lot of experience. The information is changing very fast nowadays it gives an opportunity to the mentors to learn about the entire society.”, he passionately remarks.
They have unanimously agreed upon it that this program being first of its kind in India, has an enormous potential to grow into a common platform which will connect alumni to the institute even after their graduation and as well introduce them to plethora of opportunities. Even the team does believe in this, and make it happen in near future.
We thank the alumni and the students, who enthusiastically stormed in with queries even after the session ended.
The team is immensely satisfied with such fruitful participation and wish for a flourishing relationship with your mentor.
Cheers
We in India put up with a lot of shit. We don’t mind people defecating in the open. We can turn our eyes away from beggars. We take bad roads and power cuts in our stride. Our city, Mumbai, in particular, is famed for its chalta hai attitude. Spitting on the road is something everyone does. Smelly open sewers just have to be dealt with. BEST buses and local trains have to be choc-a-bloc at rush hour. Who cares, each one of us is out there just to lead our own lives.
The same fatalist approach has managed to seep into the hallowed portals of our own alma mater as well. Two students are put up together in rooms which might as well be pigeon holes. That there is hardly any space to study is an issue secondary to the bare basic issue of abysmal living conditions – one cupboard, sad beds, no space for putting two chairs together, let alone two study tables, and no scope of doing anything in your cubbyhole other than sleeping, which you’d be lucky to do with the lights out if you and your roomate have similar sleeping habits.
Step out into the corridor and you would be forgiven for thinking that you’re in one of those Slumdog Millionaire chawls. Clothes hanging around on clothlines, dustbins overflowing with refuse, dogs and cats (which have now been adopted as pets by most wings) rearing their families with the blessings of our ignorance – the situation is slightly unsettling when you realise that this is supposed to be one of the premier institutes of learning across the world and certainly one of the model institutes in our country.
We used to cringe at this sight in our freshmen year. But we’ve come to accept it now, haven’t we? We’ve accepted that we’d be consigned to a third-world Sub-Saharan existence and that such is our fate. After all, what hope is there of changing this situation?
Stop.
We have the means and the wherewithal to make our lives better. How? Shun the laziness and make the use of the available facilities. Our alumni having been through the same so-called rigours understand the difficulties faced by us and they are more than willing to help change this situation. For the same purpose they have initiated MHMH (Make Hostel My Home) drive which empowers students to bring about the constructive changes they want to see. How does one go about doing things?
Simple.
- Click a photograph of the things that you think should be addressed & upload it on your Hostel MHMH page with the help of your Hostel’s Alumni Secretary.
- Describe the problem and any solution you find feasible on that page.
- Discuss the matter with HATS core team (consisting of Hostel G.Sec, Hostel Alumni Secretary and few alumni members of your hostel). If the solution is about discussing a matter with IITB authorities, our alumni can help us in that. If the solution requires any monetary help then acquire the relevant quotations and you are done!
Snap out of your fatalism. Why live a half-doomed life when you have a full one on offer?
Phonathon – 11 unveils Annual Fund-raising Campaign (AFC -2010)
With endsems ebbing out, the institute is back to life again. The ever increasing numbers of students staying back during their December break show that they have resumed all their activies and long-term projects.
With onset of December SARC, in its third year, is set to commence its 11th Phonathon; this time with a primary aim of raising funds for IIT Bombay as a part of Annual Fund-raising Campaign (AFC 2010).
The main areas of focus of AFC are generating funds for:
1) YFA (Young Faculty Awards)
2) HATS (Hostel Alumni Team Stewardship)
3) Greatest Needs ( Including Faculty and Student Development)
However, alumni can always specify the exact purpose for which he wishes to donate.
Besides this we intend to get more number of mentors for ASMP (Alumni Student Mentorship Program), inform them about the hostel reunion planned on the alumni day (i.e. 26th December) and update the alumni database.
Since this is a US chapter Phonathon the timings extend from late night to early morning according to GMT India. It is spread over 2 weeks (i.e 2nd December to 15th December). We are extremely thankful to IITB Alumni Association and the Dean ACR office for providing us with venue and telephone facilities in order to conduct the event.
Cheers.
I woke up this morning and before I realized it, penned down a few thoughts while listening to Time/Floyd.
(I am sure the same feelings reverberate within all alumni regardless of the hostel they lived in……………)
Coming Home
Walking down the corridor in NWSF at H4
Haunting voices beckon from each door
echoes of a forgotten time when
we learned how to live and soar ..
Sitting on the ledge, gazing back twenty-five years
thinking of the countless hours frittered away here
at times with deafening laughter, and at times
moments of a shared silence amongst friends
Inevitably leading to the last of the finals
and memories of our last night together
partying hard to Santana and Deep Purple
feeling a joyful dream end that night ..
Waking up to a new dawn the next day
seduced by the promise of a new adventure
Flying off to new destinations
Only to return after all these years and realize ..
This thing called “life” will always remain
a timeless jewel captured in these corridors
echoed in the smiles of the next generation
greeting me as I walk back to the lounge ..
To all of you living the dream right now
Thanks for adding to the mystique
of an ever-growing treasure of joy
that we all call fondly as “H4″ …
Cheers!
