NEXUS Oct 2010

Last month, few AIT Alumnus with support from Propalms Network started a new initiative in AIT college to bridge the gap between industry and academia. The first event in the series of the events, named NEXUS was organized to focus on helping students to make think about the future after engineering. During the AIT Alumni meet 2010, we got to know that lot of students (around 65%) are planning to appear for CAT right after engineering and have been spending their valuable time in attending MBA coaching classes. This was an eye opener for us. I, Jonney and Vishwajeet sat down one evening in the next week over dinner and decided to let students know what industry is demanding from students and help students take better decision.

The conclusion after few pitchers of beer was 1st Nexus event on 9th October. The goal of the event to enable students to make a better decision between MBA and engineering career.

We really focused on not making Nexus a typical seminar kind of event where few unknown alumni come on the stage and tell the students that what they are doing, thinking is all wrong and thats not how it was during their time.

Idea was not to give students negative view about any career path about tell them what works and what are the best practices.

Nexus Oct 2010

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To not make it like a boring talk show, we included a fun group activity for students, sharing a tool to help students take better decision in day to day life, presentation by an AIT Alumnus who has done MBA and is achieving new successes in his career.

We contacted the HODs and PO, got their approval which was the easiest part. The most difficult part was how to get students. The AIT Alumni coordination cell helped us getting the registrations. We wanted only 100 students to attend the event.
As expected, even though there were 100+ registrations, the no. of TE and BE students present for the event were less than 30. Rest were, guess.....FEs...

A poster was prepared and put across the campus

We had around 60 students people for the event. There were around 10 people from alumni and 5 more from Propalms Network.




After few hickups we could start the event by 11 am on Oct 9th.

While we were getting all students at one place, alumni and industry people introduced themselves and gave small talk about their experience to students.




Following that students were divided in team of 5-6 students for the group activity with one coordinator from the organizing team.
The group activity was to make a table using just newspaper to hold a 1 lt water bottle for 3 minutes.
Activity was followed by Jonney explaining the significance of the activity, which basically tells us how to work in a team and how to take better decisions.



That was followed by running a presentation prepared by Jasnoor about how, when and from where to do MBA. Jasnoor, being in bangalore had send the recorded presentation which we played in the BC joshi hall.

MBA after engineering

View more presentations from Vijender Yadav.

Though it was already past 2 pm, students stayed for a short open discussion sessions where students raised lot of important questions. some of the questions were:
1. how to get more companies to AIT for campus
2. How to get more companies for EnTC and Mech
3. Does post graduation helps and if yes how
4. How is the career path of a BE and a post grad differs in industry

we did give prizes to top 3 teams as winners of group activity. Finally we ended the event with a nice lunch organized by college administration.

We have already started planning for the next event, that we might do in month of december before the campus placements starts, which could be focused on choosing your dream company and clearing campus interviews.

If you are an alumni reading this and wants to be involved, let me know.