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Golden Moments : IME Alumni Connect - 2014

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”
 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

In order to connect with the distinguished alumni fraternity of Department of Industrial & Management Engineering (DIME), IIT Kanpur & with an aim to capitalize on the platform provided by the inaugural Alumni Meet organized in the year 2013, the second Alumni Meet cum Symposium was successfully organized at IIT Kanpur. The amount of preparations and hard work that went behind making this event a success was completely justified with the fruits that were reaped later. It enabled alumni to relive their golden days, quite literally as they got to visit not only their classrooms but their respective halls of residence as well. 


The event kick started on Mar 1, 2014 with the arrival of the esteemed alumni at Heritage Home Guest House, Kanpur, the venue for their accommodation. The hospitality team was present all the way to escort the alumni. First event of the day was the Campus Visit. The alumni were completely drenched in the feeling of nostalgia when they visited their Halls of Residence, canteens, classrooms etc. Quite expectedly, they were pretty pleased to witness the extra-ordinary infrastructure development and world-class facilities in the New SAC at IIT Kanpur. Some of them couldn’t refrain themselves from trying their hands at musical instruments or delivering dialogues in the Drama Room. On their visit to the SIDBI center, Professor Deepu Philip had a short session with them updating them on the events and happenings associated with SIDBI. They were pretty pleased to see the new building of IME Department, the facilities in classrooms, the library and the labs. It was followed up with an evening tea with Professor Veena Bansal.


Thereafter, the current students of M. Tech. and MBA programs got their first chance to interact with the alumni during the Student–Alumni Interaction session. A wide range of topics were discussed ranging from the industrial interactions to the achievements by the current crop of students. It turned out to be quite enlightening for the new batch as they got a lot of guidance and valuable suggestions from the industry savvy alumni. The alumni, at the same time, were very pleased and impressed by the profiles and accolades of the current batches.


Ultimately it was time for probably the most awaited event of the day- the cultural night. It began at 7 pm with the lightening of the lamp and an introductory speech by Professor Rahul Varman. On one side of the auditorium, we had the alumni as our special guests while on the other side were the exuberant kids from PRAYAS, an initiative of IIT Kanpur focused mainly on providing education to the underprivileged kids in and around the IITK campus. The audience was treated to the mesmerizing songs and parodies played by those kids. The involvement of the alumni in the fun games such as “know your partner”, charades, Pictionary etc. made the night even grander. The day concluded with a grand dinner which was attended by almost 300 people.


On 2nd March 2014 (Day 2), the Alumni-Faculty Interaction was scheduled. The idea behind this interaction was to learn from the industrial experiences of the alumni for the betterment of our curriculum. A lot of suggestions poured in from the alumni’s side. A few of them suggested that the students of DIME should get more involved in Pan IIT Kanpur events. It was also suggested that in order to cash in on the growth of Analytics in the industry, the curriculum should emphasize on the use of Analytics especially in the fields of Marketing and Finance. Analytics should be projected as the strength of DIME, IIT Kanpur in the industry. The alumni suggested including MS Excel as a credit course apart from organizing workshops on tools like SAS and R. Some of the other suggestions were to increase the industry interaction through summer internship and doing more projects under Special Studies with the companies; to have a management fest organized by the DIME. Overall it turned out to be an actively discussed session with enthusiastic participation from the faculties as well as the alumni.


Finally just like all good things, the grand reunion came to a wonderful end due to the combined efforts of faculty members and students. Mementos were presented to the alumni by our professors as a token of remembrance during the closing ceremony. For the two days that our alumni were in the campus, the air was filled with nostalgia. Good old college days were re-lived by the alumni, valuable inputs were given, new networks were built, experiences were shared, and appreciation was showered to realize the aim of taking the DIME to greater heights.

Varun Sharma 
Alumni Relations Team
PR MBA, IIT Kanpur

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