CoEP forum finds a way to tap alumni's talents

The students of College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) don't have to depend on other agencies for jobs anymore, as now they have their own job portal of sorts. Its students have started a first-of-its-kind online counselling forum.

The idea was to support the students of the 160-year-old CoEP by tapping the tremendous resources its alumni have created. This they did by creating this virtual platform where students can be mentored, updated on jobs and internship opportunities, and guided on academics.

Within hours of starting the forum, a former CoEPian Abhishek Nagraj, who is doing a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the US, became part of the online portal, and selected candidates for an internship programme.

The portal also allows the alumni working in different sectors to impart their knowledge and stay connected with the iconic institute.

"In a remote mentorship programme, an alumni Manavi Mahana, who is doing MS in Stanford University, expressed the need for a platform for communication between the current students and the alumni mentors," said final year student Rajat Pasari and in charge of the online portal.

Pasari was already running a grievances portal for the college students. "We conveyed Manavi's idea to the Institute's director Dr Anil Sahasrabudhe and the dean of Students Activities Dr Sudhir Agashe. We got the go ahead and after several days of trials and errors, the portal got launched three days ago. On its inception, as many as 70 to 80 students and more than 30 alumni became members," he said.

The CoEP director's message to students on the portal reads: Apart from the opportunity in the placements, the portal will be helpful to students, who sometime get stuck while studying or working on a project. They can post their problems and get solutions from other members. Counselling those who are in need, helping someone with a project, by motivating generally to steer their life's mission, arranging a talk on a burning topic, funding to attend a conference or pursue education in difficult times, are some of the possible ways that the alumni can engage with current students through this portal.

Dr Agashe said that till now they have decided to restrict the forum to only current students, faculty members and the alumni but in the near futute, they will also include NGOs, social workers and industries.Others instrumental in designing the portal are Neel Paratkar, Abhishek Joshi, Amey Marathe and Vaibhav Choudhary. Rajat said that currently they are sending mails to more and more alumni to invite them for the forum's membership. Giving his own exmple, how he will be playing the mentor's role next year, Rajat said that he has been placed in Samsung in Bangalore and now from next year, he would help his juniors on how to prepare for interviews for the firm.