the third eye Volume XIII Issue III| April 2011 Students’ Gymkhana, IIT Bombay IB Heads’ Selections Placement Season Lookback MI 2010 Review 2 4 6 Student Jury 3 ISMP – The Silent Guardian 5 TechFest 2011 Review 7 A Mess(y) Affair Work in Progress – Biswas Curriculum The first B.Tech batch under the ambit of the Biswas curriculum is passing out this year. InsIghT decided to review the curriculum and look at the broader picture. Aim of the Curriculum Steps Taken Prof. Biswas The old curriculum needed to adapt itself to the The Biswas committee believed that the core • Ensuring flexibility in curriculum, minor program change in student psyche and the perspective of industry demand is very high and no UG curricu- was focussed the industry. Students today are far more career lum can possibly fulfil that. Instead, they decided • Lack of resources (faculty and infrastructural) did oriented and want greater academic freedom. to go for a “Bare Minimum Program” which would not allow to utilize the entire package. Having a class The industry expects the recruits to have multiple touch all spheres of the department and give each with more than 250 students does not make sense skills apart from a sound theoretical knowledge; student a brief overview of all his future options. • The TAship program quality needs ameliorating, analytical skills, leadership qualities and entrepre- This program would entitle him to an engineering both in quality and number neurship skills to name a few. degree and the surplus time hence obtained is to be • The program is still in an experimental phase with utilized by the student as per his aspirations. Core almost 50% of the job done. It needs more time to It was believed that the old system did not give internships were made optional. He could focus on stabilize students enough flexibility to choose their courses extracurricular activities; do a minor or an honour according to the needs and was very harsh on programme or both. becomes a major challenge, especially for the final back-loggers. Clearing more than 3 backlogs was year students who fail a course in the odd semester. a mammoth task which resulted in students facing For pursuing this minor/honour programme, he had to academic-extension in majority of the cases. To prove his interest in academics by maintaining a good Students often complain that their courses are not avoid such a situation, the professors refrained CPI, thus solving the missing incentive issue. All core sequentially connected and often, they are unable themselves from awarding FRs, resulting in “Grade courses/ prerequisites were planned to run in both to answer even the most basic questions in their Inflation” and allotment of Self-Study courses / FF semesters to help the back-loggers while removing FF discipline. Prof Alok Goyal (Department of Civil grades. More courses meant that the faculty was grade and self-study courses. Engineering) explained – the curriculum in the overloaded and the 50% increase in student popula- Civil department filtered out some courses which tion wasn’t really helping their cause. Implementation Problems gave an industry feel of the discipline, either Though done with the best intentions, the imple- because of a faculty shortage or because they it Prof. Mehra mentation faced many issues, the major one being was felt that the course was too crude to be taught • The current UG curriculum is liberal but inadequate the inability of the institute to run core courses/ and students would anyway learn it if they entered on certain “core” aspects. It needs to be strict when pre-requisite courses every semester. As Professor core engineering. However, this way, students it comes to grade allotment (including in-sem) Anurag Mehra (Dept. of Chemical Engineering) don’t get to see the real life application of what • The industry and student culture in the U.S./Europe pointed out – it’s an open fact that the institute they are learning and tend to lose interest in core and India is miles apart. While our curriculum tends suffers from a faculty shortage of 25-30%, planning engineering. towards being more world class, Indian industries to run the same course in both semesters is simply are not really up to the mark. A balance has to be not feasible. Since, the number of courses went down, the maintained between producing engineers suitable professors also had to cut down on topics or reduce for Indian industries and being world class The Biswas committee expects that students learn the number of hours put into the topic or both. A • The problem is bilateral; students and professors their core-courses rigorously. This means tougher general opinion on the 8-credit courses, formed by need to work on the issue together. Forming course grading and more backlogs. Since the courses clubbing two 6-credit courses, is that these courses review committees at department/institute level on aren’t available in both semesters, there are always proceed at a very fast pace and hence force the a regular basis shall help slot clashes and hence several problems arise. This students to cram rather than learn the subject. Where Does Your Money Go? – We Fin(e)d Out lot of speculation goes on in the institute about April 2007, there was no norm of collecting fines. Giving honorarium to staff Rs. 2,62,758 the fine collected by the DoSA from students A student who was found violating any institute & security officials found guilty of violating institute rules and rule was either warned or had to face DAC in A Helping students belonging where and how it is channelled. So to put the matter to serious cases. While this method worked well for from financially weak rest, InsIghT found out the requisite details. small offences when the students were let go with Rs. 5,33,054 background for their fees, a warning, some cases had to be dealt harshly with medical expenses etc. During the last 4 years, from April 2007 to March a DAC. As the cases began to grow numerous in 2011, a total of Rs. 25,11,029 has been collected number, the authorities had to come up with mone- Procurement of projector as fine in the DoSA’s account which is equivalent tary penalty to serve as a middle path between used for student activities, Rs. 94,500 to virtually Rs. 50,000 per month. But, before warning and DAC. A protocol was set up after April screenings in LT etc. 2007 that included some minimum monetary punish- Alcohol Rs.5000 Fixed Deposit in Bank Rs. 1,00,000 ment for breaching such rules. Substance No fine yet. At this time only Abuse parental involvement + rehab The money collected as fine is deposited in a sepa- A purchase of two more buses has been sanctioned Motorcycle Rs.5000 rate fine account by the DoSA office. The same is with the remaining amount in the account. Any queries used from time to time by the office to sponsor or regarding the utilization of these funds can be taken up Cycle in Collected by security fund various expenditures of student concern. The with the DoSA office. ■ corridor utilization of this amount is decided in consultation Public display with the GSHA and other student representatives. For further details contact Mayank Agarwal and Nikunj Jha Depends on the severity of affection at [email protected] and nikunj.magician@gmail. of the matter and ragging com respectively. > InsIghT is the students’ newsletter of IIT Bombay. The views expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of Students’ Gymkhana, IIT Bombay. Any reproduction of these contents must include proper attribution and a link back to the InsIghT website. 2 InsIghT | April 2011 http://www.insightiitb.org Placement Season 2010–11: A Comprehensive Lookback ith the economy on a comprehensive Students though, were severely irked by the fact that possible last year, as the CCs were overburdened. upswing, this year’s placements were a the punishment for the penalty points and rewards But some students were of the opinion that CCs Wmuch looked forward to affair. There were for the preparatory activities was released retrospec- were still overloaded and that this resulted in several sweeping changes with respect to how this tively. Both these decisions were perceived as being updates on the placement blog being uploaded on year’s Institute Placement Team (IPT) approached highly unprofessional from the side of the IPT. very short notice, causing students to miss out the monumental task of securing jobs for everyone. on JAF signings, tests and interviews. The IPT There were changes not only in the Placement Policy, Registrations: Students can register for placements responded by saying that late updates have been but also to the overall structure of the IPT. Company just once. If a student with an active backlog in his because of short notice by companies and not Coordinators (CCs) were incorporated with the sole last semester finds out that the course he needs to because of CCs’ negligence. The IPT also says that purpose of contacting companies, in addition to clear to satisfy his graduation requirements was not in such cases they have personally called people up Department Placement Coordinators (DPCs) whose being offered in the final semester, then he faces an to inform them of the same. job was to hold preparatory activities for students. extension. He would have absolutely no chance of Changes with respect to the structure of the team and sitting for placements again unless the IPT deals The DPCs of quite some departments were perceived the policy have been dealt with comprehensively in with it on a case by case basis.