The two-day seminar for the students of metallurgical engineering ‘Behind the Teacher’s Desk (BTTD) 2015’, was organised jointly by The Indian Institute of Metals (IIM), Jamshedpur Chapter, Tata Steel limited and CSIR-National Metallurgical laboratory (NMl) at the auditorium of NMl.
The deliberations attracted more than 185 metallurgical engineering students from 24 reputed engineering colleges across India. The institute represented were IIT Kaharagpur, IIT-BHU Varanasi, IIT, Bhuneswar, IT-GGU, Bilaspur, INDUS University, Ahmedabad, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, NIFFT, Ranchi, NIT Durgapur, NIT, Raipur, NIT Jamshedpur, NIT Rourkela, NIT Warangal, VNIT Nagpur, AcSIR-NMl, OP Jindal Institute of Technology, Raigarh, GCECT Kolkata, IITE Ahmedabd, GIET Gunpur, Institute of Engineers, Kolkata, AKU, Patna, NSIT, Patna, VSSUT Burla, JNTU Kainada, and GEC, Gandhinagar.
Dr T Venugopalan, technical advisor to MD Tata Steel, summarised the whole proceedings of the two-day-long seminar. He said the participating students’ as well as the mentors (scientist, engineers and the senior industry professionals) both of the group benefitted from this students seminar. Dr Venugopalan added, “We could understand what student community requires. Therefore, we will add more activities in the next year’s programme to fill the gap. Then only it can complement the learning process more effectively. Through, this seminar we would like to pass the message what industry looks for from a new pass out. Certainly it is possible to match and develop relevant academic curricula as per the industrial requirement”.
Dr S Tarafder, Former Chairman, IIM Jamshedpur Chapter, said, “This seminar is an unique initiative by IIM, Jamshedpur. It provides a platform to the students to learn in the open environment, interact with the scientists, engineers and industry professionals and gain through the industrial exposure”.
Dr Sandip Bhattacharya, Chairman IIM, Jamshedpur Chapter & Chairman BTTD-2015 said the overwhelming response that has been received this year with more number of students participants as compared to the past four years.
During the forenoon, there was an industrial visit of the participating students to Tata Steel, Usha Martin, Tata Hitachi and CSIR-NMl. After lunch there was an Interactive event on Cycle of Development: Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Prof Prabal Kumar Sen, from XlRI, Jamshedpur, said, “Creation of an innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem is a major goal of education. The scientific and industrial research system also depends to a very large extent on the propagation of innovation skill-sets. We have to ensure that in educational institutions, students are encouraged to innovate, and to come up with entrepreneurial ventures so as to become “Job givers” rather than “Job seekers”. How successful are we in our endeavorIJ”
The session on “Cycle of development: Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship” includes interactive brainstorming game for participants which brings out how to make innovation and entrepreneurship a quintessential part of our learning and pedagogy. Through this fun-filled brainstorming game, students generated ideas through queries, clustering and finally sharing them with all. The outcome of this workshop was to get inspired to think out-of-box and to enhance activities in innovation, technology and entrepreneurship development.