Tushti Cell

Tushti

Life Skills and Career Counselling cell

“Pedagogical methods that integrate life skills education with the regular academic curriculum and provide learner centric environment for development and practice of such skills, enhance the well being of the society, promote positive outlook and healthy behaviour”.

“A student who is trained in life skills and is facilitated to develop and nurture such skills shall acquire the quintessential skill of positive outlook, exhibit healthy behavior and thus enhance the well being of the society.”

Prologue

A teen student who enters into engineering stream for graduation is required to acquaint self with two distinctively different skills for a successful career and fulfilling life. First, one has to acquire necessary technical skills offered as part of regular academics for a professional career. Academic parameters like aggregate, projects done, seminars attended and participated in, enhancement of co-curricular and extracurricular skills empower the student to secure job after the studies. However, to excel in the profession, mere technical skills turn out to be insufficient. In addition to the technical skills, a second set of skills that are not covered in academics are required. These skills constitute the life skills and include skills pertaining to ethical conduct of profession, humane behaviour and moral integrity. These skills empower the engineer to manage profession related pressures, resolve diverse range of conflicts and arrive at decisions that are in the interest of public safety and welfare and at the same time acceptable to the organization. Today’s engineering education needs to sensitize engineering graduates to identify and develop technologies, products and services that are human friendly, eco-friendly and aim at enriching the environment.
Identifying this need, ACE Engineering College found it necessary to focus on this dimension through a separate and dedicated department primarily focussing on these aspects of trainees. A cell, ‘Tushti’ was established with the following three dimensions of development of students.

The Birth of Tushti

The Birth of ‘Tushti’

Tushti, a word derived from Sanskrit means happiness, one of the two pursuits of human society, the other being prosperity. Happiness is a continual human pursuit. The cell focuses on educating the students to identify the purpose of studies and invest their knowledge, skills and experience to strive for happiness and prosperity.
The cell is headed by a senior faculty member with nearly two and half decades of experience who is an expert in motivating for career counselling and imparting life skills. Various learner centric activities are organized on a regular basis using both the internal as well as external resources that go along way in empowering the students.
A detailed self analysis questionnaire is designed and developed. The questionnaire developed to assess six major aspects of human behaviour viz., Self Image, Self Control, Creativity, Planning, Cooperation, and Concentration. Each of these has a set of 12 questions framed in negative form.
A student is required to take this self test. Strengths and weaknesses are assessed to gauge the student’s attitudinal and behavioural skills and this data is used to effectively mentor the student.

1. Life Skills Objectives

Impart life skills to the students whose objectives are as follows:
Make student understand the necessity of value education
Help student translate knowledge, attitude, skills and values into action
Behave responsibly that guides the student to lead a healthy living
Develop positive attitude towards themselves and others
Develop full potential of performance
Promote the state of mental well being
Inculcate the skills of proper evaluation of risks and take justifiable action
Improve self perception by:
Building self confidence
Building self esteem
Building self worth

The methodology:

In the first year, a sequence of workshops are organized in the following sequence
a. Career opportunities in the respective branch
b. Goal setting skills
c. Time Management Skills
d. Text book reading strategies
e. Preparation plan for respective branch of engineering
From second year on wards, specific workshops and orientation sessions are organized in each semester to sensitize students in various aspects of engineering studies and helping them plan for successful completion of B.Tech.
In the second year and every student is administered self analysis test and is evaluated for his/her strengths, weaknesses, as well as behavioural skills.
A report on the student is prepared by the cell and the information is shared with the mentor for effective mentoring and counselling.
This is a continuous process.

Proctoring

The yardstick of a purposeful education is honesty maintained in the learning environment since this only can ensure overall development of the student. An effective and in place proctoring system that ensures the student is continuously monitored and directed to overcome the hurdles that impede the objective learning process is the means towards this end. Proctoring system at ACE is implemented to find a satisfactory answer to the challenge of how best to assess students’ progress. In the pursuit of molding the students for excellence in academics as well as other career enhancing interests, subtle degree of enforcing discipline is well blended with emotional bonding between the student and teacher or supervisor from orientation till farewell.

Hierarchy of Proctoring System

Methodology

Every student entering the college is associated with a faculty member in the department to which the student belongs. The faculty factions as the supervisor for the student and oversees the progress of the student. The supervisor is the first point of contact and source for any disturbing factor including issues that have the potential of hindering the development of the student. The faculty is responsible for facilitating the student to overcome any shortcomings. For all practical purposes, the faculty is the steward and manager of the student and disciplinarian also. At the same time, the supervisor also ‘speaks and acts’ for the student and acts as an unbiased third-party who will verify and oversee the conduct, behaviour and performance of the student The organizational structure of proctoring activity can be understood with the following figure

How Proctoring Works

Upon admission, every student is required to fill a proctorial form
The departmental committee and proctorial board allots a faculty to the student
The student is required to meet the proctor once in a month in a trgular and routine practice. This meeting shall be initiated by the faculty supervisor.
The student is expected to share the comforts, conveniences, difficulties with the supervisor. Towards this end, the supervisor should create a conducive environment that encourages the student to openly discuss both academic as well as personal issues like the impact of the socio-economic background on the learning process
The supervisor provide a proper, simple and working solution either on his/her own or in collaboration with other colleagues.
Gist of each and every such meeting will be recorded in the proctorial form, signed by both faculty and student
Before discussing about the new issues, review of previous issues discussed are reviewed
Critical issues will be brought to the notice of the proctorial board and if necessary, a meeting be convened to resolve the issue at the earliest possible time
Proctor will encourage the student to set targets and work towards them

Mentoring

Four years of stay in the engineering college demands a fair degree of social skills that enable the students collaborate effectively with others. In many cases students are found to be falling short of these social skills. So faculty teaching engineering subjects are required to shoulder the additional responsibilities of teaching and imparting the appropriate communication, leadership, trust, decision making, and conflict management skills to students to provide the motivation to use these skills in order for excelling in their professional as well as social life both at personal level as well as groups level.

Objectives of mentoring

Work for achieving the ‘triple-objective’ that addresses
Student’s technical goal achievement
Time Management and
Team management
Motivate, empower, and encourage students through various other resources.
Challenge students to be positive decision makers
Help facilitate the process that will shape the students into successful and responsible young adults
Help increase the achievement levels of the students in all aspects
Positive impact in their lives physically, mentally, and spiritually
To assist students in receiving support and guidance from a mentor.
To improve the academic performance of the mentees.
To improve interpersonal relationships between peers, their teachers, other adults in their lives, and family members
To teach the young men life skills such as sportsmanship, teamwork, leadership, and discipline.
Help student to identify the varied interests, empower the mentee to judiciously evaluate with discretion and prioritize the interests and help hone those skills for successfully pursuing them
Organize formal mentor meetings with the mentees on a periodical and regular basis to help the student perform better in life
Guide to integrate technical and personal goals and skills acquisition, and mandate a significant component of active and cooperative learning
Help improve the generic attributes such as communication, team work, and project management
Nurture students to be more confident, more able to apply engineering competencies, solve problems working from first principles, and work in teams
Help acquire time and team management skills through experiential learning

Programs Done

S No.	Date	Workshop	Audience	Theme
1	30-08-2015	SMILE	Faculty members with experience upto 4 years	Innovative Teaching learning methodologies
		(Study Methodologies for Integrated Life Education)
2	20-09-2015	PURE-IT	Faculty members with experience between 4 8 years	Improvised Teaching learning methodologies
		(Professional Urge for Revealing Education in Technology )
3	23-11-2015	Goal Setting	I year B.Tech CE students	Importance of Goal setting
4	24-11-2015	-do-	I year B.Tech EEE students	Importance of Goal setting
5	25-11-2015	-do-	I year B.Tech ME students	Importance of Goal setting
6	26-11-2015	-do-	I year B.Tech ECE students	Importance of Goal setting
7	27-11-2015	-do-	I year B.Tech CSE students	Importance of Goal setting
8	7/12/2015	Time management	I year B.Tech CE students	How to manage time and art of work management
9	8/12/2015	-do-	I year B.Tech EEE students	How to manage time and art of work management
10	9/12/2015	-do-	I year B.Tech ME students	How to manage time and art of work management
11	10/12/2015	-do-	I year B.Tech ECE students	How to manage time and art of work management
12	11/12/2015	-do-	I year B.Tech CSE students	How to manage time and art of work management
13	20-08-2016	Gender Sensitization	II year B.Tech ECE students	Seminar on LGBT Community
14	27-08-2016	-do-	II year B.Tech EEE students	-do-
15	18-01-2017	Goal Setting	I year B.Tech CE students	How to manage time and art of work management
16	19-01-2017	-do-	I year B.Tech EEE students	-do-
17	20-01-2017	-do-	I year B.Tech ME students	-do-
18	21-01-2017	-do-	I year B.Tech ECE students	-do-
19	22-01-2017	-do-	I year B.Tech CSE students	-do-
20	23-02-2018	-do-	I year B.Tech CE students	-do-
21	24-02-2018	-do-	I year B.Tech ME students	-do-
22	25-02-2018	-do-	I year B.Tech EEE students	-do-
23	2/3/2018	-do-	I year B.Tech ECE students	-do-
24	3/3/2018	-do-	I year B.Tech CSE students	-do-