IIT-Madras plans to facilitate parent, faculty meet

Sometimes too, parents could be the cause of a student’s stress: they may nurture unrealistically high expectations of their children, placing undue pressure on them. Or else, they could also be successful in providing him or her relief from it. The institute therefore wants to bring parents closer to faculty and the administration by increasing opportunities for interaction. 

Prof MS Sivakumar, Dean (students) at IIT-M, said that currently, parents interacted with teachers during admission and on a few other occasions. “We will have some kind of registration during breaks, like long weekends, during which parents can register and come to the institute when the student is also on the campus. Parents can interact with our faculty and our administrators. The main reason behind our doing this is to give parents an idea of what is happening at the institute. Bringing parents close to the institute will also help them form a network among themselves,” Prof. Sivakumar said. 

It is for the same reason that the institute also contemplates roping in alumni to mentor students. Prof Sivakumar said that students had urged them to ask alumni to interact with groups of students: each alumnus could take a small group of students and mentor them. “We are thinking about this proposal: alumni may be willing, but they may be busy, and so we need to pick those who can make this time commitment. Our alumni would have gone through similar difficulties and come out of it. The idea is to connect them with our present batches so that they can help bring down our students’ stress levels,” he added. 

However, students view the move differently. “I think it’s slightly impractical to introduce parent-teacher meetings, as most parents are not from Chennai and would not like to travel from different parts of the country just to meet the professors. Moreover having interactive sessions between the professors and students would have more impact. It’s okay to keep the parents in the loop via email and the such, but truth is we are in college, not school and we can handle ourselves,” said Vamsi Krishna Nula, 2nd B.Sc civil engineering, IIT- Madras.