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.