Rajesh Jha MEC97 Writes...
To enrich the academic experience of ME undergraduates at IT-BHU, MECH '97 has initiated an effort to create a self-sustaining, informal process where all Mech alumni generously contribute ideas and funding. The intent is to provide ME undergrads with the facilities and encouragement that they truly deserve!
To work out how we can help our alma mater we invite current students and faculty at IT-BHU to join in and share ideas. To kick off this discussion and start contributing ideas, a few of us Mech 97 alumni brainstormed the following proposal. Please share thoughts at http://www.itbhu.org/chapters/dept/mec/ or E-mail theproject97@hotmail.com
Long-term goals of this project are:
* Improving laboratory and computing facilities
* Facilitating modernizing curriculum
* Increasing awareness of and enthusiasm for Mechanical Engineering
In the short-term, following project milestones are being considered:
* PC Lab: Setting up a PC lab equipped with state of the art hardware and software is proposed as the first milestone of this project.
* Fund BTPs: Second milestone is to fund creative B. Tech. projects each year to enable students to undertake more financially challenging projects. Students will compete for funds from a pool allocated each year. One way of selecting a small number of projects could be voting by students and faculty.
* Institute Awards: Third milestone will be to institute awards for outstanding students and faculty to encourage them
* Best Teacher Award: The best teacher will be selected by outgoing students and will carry a cash reward along with a plaque.
* Best BTP awards: Institute awards for the top three B. Tech. projects. These will carry a cash award to each winning group, but significant prestige.
Apart from these milestones, lets organize frequent visits and presentations by alumni to keep the department abreast of the latest developments in our respective fields, be they software, finance, business or core engineering.
A pledge drive to raise funds for the project is underway. So far, we have successfully raised Rs.1,40,000/- and hope for more. We propose to set up a small pc lab equipped with at least four PCs, UPS and a printer as the first milestone.
Other milestones will be taken up in the order listed based on availability of funds and the success of the first milestone. We would like to set up the funding of BTPs and best teacher and best BTP awards for a period of at least four years and then re-evaluate.
We encourage you to start similar fund raising efforts along the lines of efforts made for sports and cultural events.
We request the alumni to make a pledge by emailing at theproject97@hotmail.com. Pledges can be made in a currency of your choice. There is no lower limit on pledge amounts. Pledge information is posted on http://www.itbhu.org/chapters/dept/mec/. The website also supports a discussion board and will have updates of the project in future.
Below we present some suggestions on operational details.
* A focus group of four people can be formed to handle project implementation work as well as maintenance activities. We prefer representatives from students and one from professors. The group will be reconstituted each year.
* One of the students is identified as the key contact person for liasioning.
* This key contact person and the faculty member will together manage the accounts. It is recommended that a group account be created at the ICICI bank where money can be remitted.
We expect that the focus group be formed by summer vacation 2003 and envision the PC lab be operational by fall semester 2003. We hope you would find this very exciting and come forward to making it a success.
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