Two years of Master's study made me a hardware engineer in the Silicon Valley, a Mixed Signal Designer to be precise or an IO designer to sound cooler. However, during my Master's study, I realized I was behind the rest of the pack because of my own lack of understanding of the basic transistor! 4years of Instrumentation Engineering had not armed me with this strong foundation, which undercut any efforts that were being taken by me to improve to be at least at par with my classmates. This mini struggle within me propelled me to devise a way to harness new graduate students with such a fundamental topic. Electronics and hardware design historically have the lowest passing percentages and my classmates from Cummins College of Engineering used to be mortally afraid of these in my college days if my memory serves me right. Thus, classes for Electronic Device and Circuits and its like topics abound, which are overworked with a vast syllabus that they must cover in 2-3 months. Having learnt my favorite transistors from the industry's best, I realized that the xtor (in industry we like to call the transistor this) was not such a fearsome thing if taught clearly, slowly and once. Thus began an effort to get an on-line Cummins Alumni Guidance Center (CAGC) started wherein the batch mates that I had gathered would be able to communicate with students over the web and potentially even have interactive sessions on technical topics or professional etiquette or mentor students for projects. Ever after about a year's pursuance, this idea did not take wings as we, (in the CAGC group) were unable to overcome the hurdle of getting college permissions or support and failed to build a swift communication channel between students and us. It was clear therefore, that to meet my objective, we were to circumvent 'institutes' and have an independent connection with all interested students. A blessing came in the form of friend who had returned to India after doing his Master's at Stanford. He too had started arranging seminars in VIT with the same intention, viz. making available his clear knowledge to more people. We met, we spoke and it was arranged, that during my next visit, I would conduct a lecture series for 2nd and 3rd year engineering students and early industry electronics aficionados!
Come March 10, 2005, 44 students from multiple colleges and departments showed up in the rented classroom in
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MDR, Pune. I was quite amazed that the on-line registration had even enrolled 1 person from Bangalore ! We had to politely inform him that the lectures would be taking place in Pune, putting him at a disadvantage greatly! Of the 44 enthusiasts, I quelled the budding exuberance of 30 people by talking about Device Physics for the first lecture! It was initially demoralizing to most, but this turned out to be a great filter to retain people with real interest and a strong physics background. Given only 6 days to cover xtor, expounding on device physics for any longer was not an option. Six days passed quickly and left both the students and the instructor - myself invigorated. The bunch that stuck around lecture after lecture, ruminated; they made me think, asked pointed questions and learnt! The class was purposely kept interactive and I thank the students for helping me make it one. I handed out lecture notes at the beginning of the lectures as much as possible so that the students wouldn't spend time jotting things down. Students picked up on this style of teaching and by the last lecture when I didn't have handouts ready, demanded them! At the end of the last lecture, students showed much appreciation by getting a huge chocolate cake which we enjoyed over informal introductions. Having a smaller group indeed helped us to get a bigger piece each!!
I must mention that since I visit my family for 2 weeks once every 2 years, my time comes at a high premium. To let me lecture for 2 hours for 6 of the 13 evenings we were in Pune and to let me prepare for about 2 additional hours every afternoon is a big price they paid and I am indebted to them for that. Not only had that, my husband who is a Mechanical Engineer by trade, attended all my lectures in a show of support. Now he knows when I am trying to pull the wool over his eyes with my electrical engineering lingo!
So it came to an end, my hugely satisfying teaching stint in Pune which I very much intend to repeat on my future visits. If anyone has better ideas to help me promote such instruction sessions or would like to volunteer to help us do the ground work in Pune we'd welcome suggestions at ukelkar@gmail.com.
My ideas for setting up an Alumni Center are here-http://www.speakeasy.org/~ukelkar/crude/index.html.Udayan Kanade, my friend who arranges seminars on other Computer Science and Electrical Engineering related topics maintains all his information here- http://www.udayankanade.org/
UMA KELKAR
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