CAMPUS NEWS!!!

After the festivities of Mood Indigo and Techfest '99 had died down, IITian junta used the month of February to engage in the arduous task of picking up the threads of life (and coincidentally academics). The mid-semester exams have come and gone and happy days are here again. At the moment the replies from universities are coming in, and like every year, there is no dearth of fellowships and scholarships. Coming up is a festival celebrating the skills of entrepreneurship called 'Crossroads'. Crossroads is a festival about the youth of today, their future and what it has in store for them. It shall provide information to the participants as regards Career and a chance to learn from the experiences of those who have excelled.

Watch this space for more details.

Symphony'99: Our inter-collegiate cultural fest was celebrated on the 11th, 12th & 13 of February. The fest included many Literary, Oratory & Musical events along with fun-filled informals and fun-sports.

The main attractions were the three pronites:

Moksh: Whosane?

Fusion-nite: Fazal Qureshi, Taufiq Qureshi, Louis Banks, Shreedhar Parthasarathy & Sultan Khan

Gazal-nite: A performance by Hariharan

APES, (Association of Production Engineering Students) organized a seminar on ERP on February 26, 1999.

MESA (Mechanical Engineering Students Assoc.) organized a seminar on Vapor Absorption Cycles on February 27, 1999.

EESA (Electronics Engineering Students Assoc.) & IEEE-KJSCE organized a seminar on Industrial Automation and Control on March 5, 1999.

Eminent professors and experts from the industry will be presenting theory papers. All the participants for the seminars will be awarded certificates.

Our main event for this semester was the intercollegiate event 360° which was organized by the IEEE student branches from the following colleges besides ours: KJ Somaiya, FRCRCE, MHSS College of Engineering, SP College of Engineering and DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering. The event was organized to promote co-operation and bonding within the various student branches of IEEE and to inculcate the spirit of IEEE in all students present. There was a gamut of events from debates, crosswords, quizzes to circuit building and programming contests.

The Industrial Electronics chapter of IEEE held a workshop on VRML conducted by NCST. Sometime earlier in the semester they organized an IQ quiz for the students.

The Computer chapter of IEEE is helping the students learn a variety of software languages such as HTML and Visual Basic. Students adept in the field are teaching theory of the language as well as helping out with practical knowledge. This is doing extremely well in college as courses outside cost an exorbitant amount - students can get a basic know-how of the language at a nominal cost and in just a few weeks can master the programming language.

The Communications chapter along with the Industrial Electronics is planning to organize a workshop on repair of household appliances. This is to be held in March.

A Microprocessor based workshop is going to be conducted by teachers of the Electronics Department in our college for students from different colleges such as Jaihind, DG Ruparel, St. Xavier's etc.

The in-house college festival AVALANCHE took place in the first week of March. This will see its usual set of events like Mehndi and cartoon painting competitions as well as other cultural events such as western and Hindi solo singing and one act plays.

The National Social Service Scheme (NSS) branch in our college held a sale of handicraft items; an event called Aakruti, on March 8, 1999. The spastic children made these handicrafts. The NSS is also conducting a Literacy drive attempting to teach English to the peons of our college.

This semester's activities were inaugurated by the IEEE-PROJECT that was exhibited at ELECRAMA'99 in January, where our Student Branch members developed an Autonomous Rover with a Collision Avoidance System.

January end was dominated mostly by cultural activities like our college festival UTSAV and the Annual Day, both of which was a huge success.

The IEEE-WEEK, which was organized during mid February, was a blend of both technical (Beyond 2000:" Emerging and Emergent technologies") and non-technical symposiums (Students Professional Awareness Conference) in collabration with the Debating Society, which aimed at creating an awareness among students about the current technology trends and also about entrepreneurial and managerial skills for engineers.

Among the other activities planned are technical symposiums organized by the other technical societies in college like the Telecom Soc. (ASSET), the Instrumentation Soc. (ISA), the Students Forum for Electronics (SFE) and the Computer Society of India (CSI) etc.

On February 16, 1999, during the college festival Pratibimb, Technovanza a hardware/software contest was held. The entries were as diverse as microprocessor simulators to refrigeration systems.

On March 6, 1999, a talk was held by Madhavi Deasi regarding career opportunities abroad.

The even semester as in most colleges is a very hectic one full of activity. The college organized an intercollegiate debating competition (the first of its kind!) " The Fr Conceicao Rodrigues Memorial Debate" which had 16 colleges participating, on February 18 19 and 20, 1999.

The IEEE student chapter also organized a number of activities. A PC Assembly workshop was organized on February 24, 1999. A computer debugging contest and a workshop on Advanced Windows 95/98 was also held. The college also saw the inauguration of a Computer Society of India (CSI) student chapter.

On the non-technical front, the eliminations for various events in the college festival "Euphoria" were held. The Sports Trophy went on the line with various classes competing against each other in various sporting disciplines ranging from chess to cricket.

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