Revival of VVCE Alumni association

Dear All, this post is about the Vidya Vardhaka College of Engineering (VVCE) alumni association, which I am currently working as secretary of this association as part of my service to the college.

Since my engineering days I have been involved in many of the start up works at VVCE, be it be college placements, the Vidyuth, strikes… and the list continues. After I passed out of the college, bloody IT industry was down. So I had no campus placements nor off campus placements. One day an invitation came to my house inviting me for the “inauguration of VVCE Alumni association. I wondered how come the college people are doing this? So went in for that meeting, me madhukar, bharath were there, we had a nice lecture given by all the management people along with the Princi saying about the association. I voluntarily became the member of the executive committee. That was the last day for the association. Neither any one took interest nor any one bothered about it. So the chapter was closed temporarily.

The next revival was supposed to happen when I joined the college as a faculty. At that time Uday had called up Dr.Mahadevappa, then prince that he was doing work for Alumni association at US and he asked the help of college to mobilize the activity. Due to internal stuffs and non interest from [people in the college, it again went dead. Uday was the unhappy guy. After this incident I also felt bad as I got to know how it will feel after ur hard work goes in drain. So I decided to revive the alumni association. But due to lack of support it did not happen. But I did not loose heart, as people say “Fortune favours the brave” one fine day in 2007 the college decided to revive the association after Mr.Bhojakumar came to the college. This person was the first examiner for me in my engineering and I had witnessed his strictness during that time. But I had not met him after that as he did not come to our; lab exams as external examiner.

In the meeting I had decided to blast the management for their lack of interest shown towards the alumni association. When Mr.PSB(bhojkumar) announced that invitations were sent to people to attend the meeting, I was furious .( he is not to be blamed as the college people had all wrong addresses of people, I mean the expired ones). Then in my talk I blasted the entire college management and the organizers. That’s the way I got noticed form all the people. As I was known to all they wanted me to become the VP f the association, I was not ready to become as I had already done enough to college, but I wanted to be actively involved in the Alumni association so I decided to become the secretary. From that day onwards I started working for the association actively. Really it feels great to work for such an association where you get to know all people of your college. I started to hold weekly meetings with Mr.PSB and meanwhile Mr.Ravikumar of IS dept also pitched in with his support. This was a great beginning; also behind me was our EC HOD Mr.Basavaraj. Plans began to roll and the participation was still bleak as many still have a bad impression about the college. As I know the in and out of VVCE , I know that there is no fault in the college, the situation makes them to be like that , but I still hate the management for the reason that they ignore the staff and students and don’t consider any inputs what we give.

As the meetings went on, Mr.Sonu, the webmaster had come up with the new college web link. Really it was the one we needed, I was giving inputs to PSB for putting info into the web links as some alterations were needed. It was being done without any delay, thanks sonu for ur efforts. He also updated the alumni link and I gathered email ids from him of people who had registered in the web link as members. Believe it or not in one year we are able to get 350+ registrations. From being 20 in 2006 it is now grown to 390 in 2008. All the thanks go to the HOD’s of Mech, ECE, CS and IS department. I pressurized them to involve students into the activity of association.

Today I am the happiest man, I was able to constantly bug people to actively involve in the alumni association activities and make students to give back something to the departments. It has been a success. Many people have donated books to their departments, many are giving seminars, and many are helping them in off campus placements. Any how the campus placements are already stabilized by the efforts of me and Dr .M. Mahadevappa . [I am proud to say that because of my efforts along with some good fellows work we have a good placement at VVCE. No body can claim the same. Whole of the VVCE knows about the work that. Work has been done to make the companies to come and get the placements done. If any body objects it (I say F*** off) I know that they are fools.]
It’s good to see that many were with me for the amendments made and also were giving feed backs about how to improve the association, but mere saying will not be enough, somebody has to implement it. I am looking forward for people getting involved in this. To some extent it is getting successful.

The first step was the award for the best outgoing student. This was a great exercise for us. I along with some enthu people started this idea (Uday, madhu , rohit had their support). The awards history goes back to 2004 when the tusspatakis decided to give prize for the best skit team at Vidyuth. This event also involved me as I was the one point contact at the college at that time. Since that time I am involved in this and make sure that it is done every year by alerting the TP gang. The best outgoing student award was the first of this kind to be given out at VVCE. We know in colleges all toppers are honored for their efforts, but some deserving people loose out in these aspects. I wanted those people to get the real appreciation as they were the real heroes. So I had this draft proposed to all the HOD’s and they accepted. Also many alumni’s supported this idea. Then began the hunt. It was for the best students of VVCE for the year 2007-08. the next post will cover our efforts to find the student who really had stood out from the crowd.