murali@think.ARPA (Muralidhara Subbarao) (11/10/85)
At the request of the author, I am posting this letter
from the IIT-M net. -murali.
*********************************
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 11:22:40 pst
From: atd!dsd!srinivas@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Srinivasan Venkatesan)
Message-Id: <8511051922.AA18882@dsd.UUCP>
To: iitmnet@ernie.berkeley
Subject: IITM reunion -- some thoughts
Regarding the upcoming IIT Madras alumni meeting at Houston, I had the
following thoughts that might be of interest to IITM alumni as starting
points of a discussion. To introduce myself, I am M.V.Srinivasan,
B.Tech(Electronics), 1979.
The list is neither comprehensive nor necessarily always relevant, of course.
And so here goes:
1. Have a significant percentage of the alumni in North America continued to
work in their IITM branch(major or field of study)? This is prompted by a
recent surge in the number of people who have moved to Computer Science after
B.Tech.(including yours truly). Of course there is the ever present migration
to management. Is there a reason for this shift, specifically, a belief that
the B.Tech. in India is inadequate to match the current state of the field
in the West? I guess any answer would depend on whether one's current field
and its divergence from the B.Tech. branch can be defined adequately enough.
2. Is it possible for alumni to keep IITM aware of some of the recent advances
in the West, especially of material that might be used in IITM coursework?
It will be too much to expect all the recent advances to be available at once
in IITM and it would anyway take a significant amount of effort to use such
information in coursework. The kind of information I have in mind does not
necessarily involve a new subject per se, but anything that could be used for,
say, project work in new areas, updating existing courses at IITM, etc. As an
aside, I remember the rumors we heard in 1976 that the Electronics syllabus
in IITM had changed its focus from vacuum tubes to solid state devices only
around '73 or '74 and that too only at the insistence of some faculty who
had to fight Ad Block on the issue. I don't know how correct the information
is, but I think something like that should not happen in a place like IITM.
One effect of alumni passing on information might be to avoid such things.
3. Continuing the above point, is there anything the alumni can do to
introduce courses in some fields of engineering that have become increasingly
important in recent years and will become more so in the future? The
branches in IITM are what one would consider the "classical" branches of
engineering. Recent additions(after 1979) have been Computer Science and
Naval Architecture, I believe. Some new fields that I can think of include
telecommunication, material processing(I think the ability to create new
materials with extraordinary strength and other characteristics is one of
the most significant advances of the last few years, but that is only a
personal opinion), transportation engineering, energy engineering(especially
for India, as Bombay High may run dry in 20 years), bioengineering(or even
genetic engineering, to produce and use new biomaterials), etc. I am sure
quite a few of you are much better qualified to comment on these fields
than I am and will have a lot more to say on this point.
4. Can alumni, especially those in academia and research here, play a
significant role in attracting professional conferences and workshops to
IITM in particular and to India in general? IITM is an institutional member
in a lot of professional organizations in the West and might be able to use
that fact to attract these conferences. A few professional meetings held
every year in IITM would be a tremendous boost in increasing awareness of
current progress in various fields and would go a long way in preventing
any obsolete and "low grade" research in India aimed at reinventing the wheel.
Another effect might be to give researchers and students in India a chance to
interact with Indian researchers in the West for whatever it is worth. These
conferences might involve financial issues, probably foreign exchange,
which I am not qualified to comment upon.
5. Should alumni promote the idea of IITM allowing a student to have a
minor of his or her choice or possibly have dual majors? This may appear
an unimportant issue, but I am prompted to ask this because of reports
that recent entrants are opting for Computer Science as first choice and
then for other engineering majors. I feel(again, it is only a personal
opinion) that this might lead to "software-only" type engineers who might
not want to or be able to apply their knowledge to difficult engineering
and technological problems in other areas. If a minor or dual major is
available, a lot of new entrants might be encouraged to go in for an engg.
major(and Computer Science as minor, if they so desire) so they can get to
use the power of computerization in their field of engineering. Corollaries
to having minors or dual majors include new course selection guidelines, maybe
a variable duration of stay at IITM, a reasonable number of elective courses,
major changes in faculty attitude and training, project courses tackling
specific engineering problems, inter-departmental co-operation, maybe new
grading systems, improved lab facilities, etc.
6. It is very common to see students in this country having summer or
co-op employment related to their majors. While it is also seen in India,
it is not common. Few Indian companies care to recruit summer trainees, even
without pay, on campuses and, when at IITM, few of us knew where to start
looking for summer job experience. I wonder if such summer job experience
would make B.Tech. education more worthwhile, and if so, whether alumni can be
involved in improving the possibilities in India. A slightly crazy idea would
be to see if it is feasible to get summer training for some IITM students
outside India(not necessarily in USA or the West). I know the costs would be
very high, but host families made up of willing alumni might be able to
reduce the cost and make the idea not so far-fetched.
7. Is there a reasonable way of collecting statistics on the professional
activities of alumni, especially a few years after graduation? Should we
make an effort in this direction? This may involve keeping track of as many
alumni as possible, generating periodical(NO, not those Monday, Wednesday
and Friday ones!!) questionnaires on professional activities that
interested alumni might fill in and send to the Alumni Association,
generating some sort of statistics based on this data, etc.
Some of the above issues may appear daunting, but then IITM is a small
autonomous place where changes can be quickly initiated, tried and the
experience passed on to other interested universities. I hope it isn't
political if I say that recent events in India have made it likely that our
voices might be heard, especially those of us with technical experience in
the West who are willing to speak up.
I would be glad if someone cared to discuss some of these at Houston, as I
most probably won't be there. Of course, rebuttal, approval and discussion
are welcome and hoped for. I temporarily don't have access to newsnet, but
if someone wants to edit and post this to net.nlang.india to reach those
not on iitmnet, please do so but make sure there is only one copy on the net.
--srinivas (ihnp4!fortune!dsd!srinivas) (415)367-4471 Work
(ucbvax!atd!dsd!srinivas) (415)494-7022 Home
******************************