An Interview with the Technical Secretary
Written on August 20th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}Q1. In your SOP, you have emphasized the importance of support from the industry to enhance technical culture. With several companies having to resort to extreme measures such as mass layoffs to ensure their sustenance, what assistance can we reasonably expect from them in this current environment?
A. My industry support point was specific to teams representing our campus in international and national competitions and not the whole Tech Senate in general. So associations and clubs are on their own, and they will not be relying on the industry as such. But the entire idea of teams getting industry support is, for example, like if you take the underwater robotics project that ARC started last semester, so we had plans to participate in the Singapore autonomous underwater vehicle challenge. It is an international competition. No faculty on campus works in the domain of underwater robotics. So, it was extremely challenging for us to get help from them. We ended up doing it on our own. But if you look at it, in PS-1, we had this station called the Maritime Research Center. It's a research laboratory. It had PS projects, and in some of them, underwater robotics played a major role.
If we were to take help or guidance from such laboratories or research centers or even corporates, it would benefit the teams. People over there have done their PS on the same topics that we have been working throughout the semester to build. I'm sure they won't mind guiding us, informally, to say the least, or even formally with a proper MoU.
Vulcan's basic work can be done using the machaninary that's available in the workshop which gives a slight edge when compared to SEDS or other teams. But if you take SEDS, for example, rocket propulsion is not that good on campus. DRDO and ISRO have amazing projects and research areas on rocket propulsion. We can likely find faculty with contacts in these departments as institutions like DRDO were PS stations before. If we can use these contacts, even in an informal setting, to get some help or guidance, it would benefit the team a lot.
Q2. Promises of building the SU Portal for student projects have been thrown around for the last 3 years. According to your SOP, you plan on making another Professor Project Portal for students. How will this be different from the SU Portal, which is already in the works?
A. I can't comment regarding the SU portal since I am unsure of its intended purpose. My plan was more like an extension to say ERP or SWD's already existing websites. I talked about how we can do it in two phases. The first phase is where we show the existing projects that the Profs are doing, and the students who are doing the projects, and this is very static information. So it's just text, and it can be done in a WordPress blog, within say a day or something, all you need is data. So the first phase can be done instantaneously.
The second phase where students can apply for projects, and Profs can shortlist people and then select them. That needs a bit more time and would probably require a separate portal. And before writing my SOP, I talked to SWD, I spoke with the previous student coordinators for SWD (not the current ones), and they told me that they're fine with it, and they're in fact, willing to help with the portal. So I think we can use the SWD's help in getting it done. The Technical Senate team, which has a tech division under it, will be responsible for the maintenance of this website, and to also help SWD because SWD has other work as well. So that's the entire idea behind the website part, and the first phase of it can be done instantaneously. And once the first phase is up and running, depending upon how successful the first phase is, the second phase can be rolled out.
Q3. You have mentioned about increasing the SAF and diverting the increased amount of money towards the Technical Senate. How do you plan to go about this proposal vis a vis the presenting it to the student body and the SU?
A. So every semester, we all pay a few additional fees. There's the Student Union fee and then the Student Aid fund. And then there's a discipline fee. I'm sure very few people would have heard of this discipline fee, which is around a hundred rupees. The discipline fee goes to the association of your branch. For example, if your major is mechanical, that goes to the mechanical association. Every single student on campus pays this, so all 4000 people pay 100 rupees to the respective associations. The Student Union fee, you are paying around 450 rupees, I guess. And all of this money is directly going into the campus fests. And then on top of this, you also pay separately for ATMOS, Pearl, and such. And in total, you spend around 2000 bucks a year just for the fest. And each fest lasts for like three days. At the end of all of it, you're getting a loss of around nine lakhs or something by the end of the entire tenure.
People from the placement division have contacted me, and they've asked me details about some ARC projects. I'm sure even Vulcan and SEDS got similar calls. All this technical culture that we're building is representing our campus in front of companies. They're planning on using this data in the placement brochures, to pitch companies, like core companies. So I think the amount of money or time that we invest in the technical culture will affect each and every one of us, either directly or indirectly, be it through campus placements or be it through the exposure that our campus gets for even Master's or Ph.D.
If you look at the Sports and Cultural Senates, they come under the SU, and the SU is obliged and responsible, according to the Constitution, to see that they get the inventory they need. In ARENA, all our sports teams participate. In Pearl, most of the Cultural Senate works and organizes events. And they work for SUC, and they get SUC's support in the end. But if you look at ATMOS, which is the only profitable fest, the Tech Senate works for ATMOS and gets nothing in return, like literally nothing. We conduct workshops and competitions, and we bring in loads of footfall, and the Tech Senate literally does it for free as of now.
So the entire point is, we don't come under SUC. So they are not required to fund the Tech Senate. So we should look for other ways to generate funds, or it will be a losing battle in the long run. That's the entire point of us trying to get money.
The idea of getting money from SUC or SAF is not finalized yet. As that depends on many factors, I'll have to talk to the Tech Senate. I'll also have to speak with SSD Sir, and there might even be a GBM on this, so I'll have to convince the GB about it. So it's a long process, but I hope we get to some conclusion by the end of the semester. The other alternative is to give the Tech Senate some profits from ATMOS. I've talked to previous technical secretaries like Sharad Gollouri. During his tenure, he secured 3.5 lakhs of funds directly from ATMOS profit - which was given to the Tech Senate. Unfortunately, this did not continue because of certain unknown reasons. But I think one of the primary reasons is because this arrangement was never made a formal Constitutional amendment. It was an informal thing. I plan to get this amended into the Constitution so that it continues every year, and people don't have to fight for the same stuff every year.
Q4. Can a significant drop in footfall and revenue be assumed for this year's ATMOS, considering that it will be completely online if held at all? If yes, how do you plan to make up for the expected losses in footfall and revenue for this online ATMOS?
A. ATMOS is a fest that is organized between the SUC and the Tech Senate. I really can't comment on the SUC's plans because they're not elected yet. The Tech Senate hasn't been fully formed yet, so I haven't talked to them either. But according to my beliefs, I don't think an online ATMOS is feasible in the slightest. With ATMOS or any fest, we take pride as BITSians in doing so because we say that we conduct our fests from scratch, whereas other colleges outsource it. Any fest is a matter of a lot of departments, a lot of clubs, and many people coming together to make it work. And if you take an online ATMOS or any online fest for that matter, a lot of departments will completely lose their work, like say, DoSH or LSD or Controlz. DePP is left, and probably DoPE is left. So if the student body is not working for a fest, it really isn't of much use to the general body. It is just like an online talk or event, and people will come and attend and leave. The General Body won't be able to enjoy this as much as it does an offline fest.
Q5. As you are unable to comment about ATMOS right now, what could replace an online ATMOS? What activities do you have planned to ensure the culture remains?
A. We've seen the tech week happen last semester. So we can have an online tech week, which can be conducted on a national scale. Tech week usually includes workshops, probably even some competitions or hackathons. While most technical parts of ATMOS can still be carried on - headliners like Robowars cannot happen for obvious reasons. Still, the majority of the events done by the technical associations can be shifted to an online platform. Our revenue expectations would also be better compared to ATMOS because if we plan on having an online ATMOS, we will most probably run into losses. I think online tech week would be much better because we will still be able to generate some revenue without going completely into losses, and we can still ensure that the technical associations can work.
Q6: Why do you think so many students give up on their core branches? And how can you, in your capacity as the Technical Secretary, create interest in search fields outside of the classroom?
A. The entire concept of people opting for IT jobs and not sitting for core is not just because of the tech culture. While the technical culture also plays a crucial part in it, I think it's more about the availability of resources. For example, if I'm a first-year student and if I want to start something, and I look for resources, and if you look at core, you don't even know what core is, you don't even know what do you have to do and that the entire idea of research is very vague for first-year students. So you'll have to approach a professor, ask for projects, study a lot and grapple with lots of questions that first-years frankly don't know the answers to. The other more accessible approach they find is IT or competitive coding, where you can sit in front of a laptop in your room, learn it at your own pace, and then just do it. So the resources for IT and competitive coding and say, all these very popular career choices on campus, are very readily available.
So I think it's a significant difference in terms of the availability of resources and the information about a particular domain. It isn't available since your first year, and by the time you actually learn about core in your second or third year, it will be too late, and people will already be very much inclined towards IT or CC. The tech senate's research portal is entirely to promote research on campus and to make that first step into research slightly easier. It is not going to create new research interests in people. What the portal can achieve is helping people who are already thinking about going into research but are shy about starting in and who don't know where to start from or whom to approach. Once people actually start doing research, and then other people look at them doing it, it will slowly gain more and more traction. So, I think it's a very slow and lengthy process.
I've talked with some associations about it. Their professors complain that students usually don't take the first initiative. Why should the professors take the initiative to promote research on campus and go out of their way to conduct talks?
I think it's an issue on both professors and the students, and both sides should take the initiative towards solving an issue that impacts all stakeholders. Only then will the actual research culture and core placement scenario change. But talks like these that we're having in the lockdown period with people who have finished some research work, who are doing PhDs and who have Masters admits coming and talking about their experience will definitely promote research culture on campus.
Q7. Do you feel the technical culture is biased towards certain fields like IT?
A. I agree that our technical culture is biased towards IT and competitive coding, finance, and some other fields. I think it's basically because of the ease of the availability of resources. If you take finance, you know what to do. You sit for a minor in finance, do some courses, take up some projects, sit for PS-2, and you're done. But say you want to go for a Master's in computer architecture, for example, you don't have a clear path. You don't know what to do, you'll have to do a lot of research, work under professors that you know, but then you don't know which professor to work under and know who's going to take you in. A lot of questions arise that people don't know in their first year. So, talks from people who have already done it and their experiences, along with teachers taking some initiative to encourage students to undertake projects, will help a lot in the long run.
Q8. Many people criticize clubs like CRUx and ARC for being too selective in their intake, which demotivates students who are considered not good enough. Do you think technical clubs should be more inclusive in the induction, or does the current system work?
A. I can talk more about ARC because I've seen it. When we first started ARC inductions in the first semester, we took in nine people from 2019. That was a pretty shockingly low number on its own - 9 out of 1000. But then if you look at the number of people who applied, you'll get a completely different picture. I think around 20 people applied. And we took in nine people - that's about 50% of the people who applied. It's not just about us being selective; it is also students lacking the initiative of even applying for the technical clubs, which is why we have changed the system this time a bit. Usually, ARC inductions are very rigorous because you have to physically build a project in your winter vacation and show it, and then we have an interview. But this time, we included enthusiasts and did not ask them to build a project. Instead, we designed a summer course for them and had an interview on that course. This time in the second semester, we took 16 people from 25 people who applied for the induction. So I think that's a good increase. And now we have like a total of 25 2019 people.
So I think even CRUx has done the same, with summer groups. It is true that we are very picky about people, but it's also the fact that very few people try to apply because they think CRUx and ARC have very high expectations, and they can't actually get inducted. People should be more willing to try it out. In my SOP, under learning resources, I've highlighted the new process. It's that instead of having inductions once in a semester, and people needing to wait for an entire semester to sit for inductions - we have come up with a summer group which is to remain open throughout the year, where people can join the group, complete the 3-4 weeks worth syllabus and sit for interviews whenever they want to, instead of waiting for inductions to happen. So they can complete the course at their own pace, and if they're good enough, we'll take them.