Confidence Building Workshop

Confidence Building Workshop by ACM-Women Chapter SEECS was held on December 16^th, 2014 from 0300 hrs to 0500 hrs at the IAEC Lecture Hall.

The aim was to have a highly interactive session for students who are shier than others, who find it difficult to effectively communicate their ideas to their peers or teachers even despite possessing some of the best ideas ever thought of.

The guest speaker was Mr. Salaar Talha Azhar. A little something about him: He started his journey as a theater trainer. He creates platforms for people and always encourages student involvement. He has been working as a Free Lancer, Researcher and Leadership Consultant. Quoting his about.me profile I say:

 “This 27 year old man after discovering diversified directions of life is now in quest of triumphing more crescendos. He is carrying out his interest in International Relations.”

The seminar kicked off with a great zeal. This wasn’t one of those people-get-so-bored-they-start-snoring seminars. This time each and every student was so involved owing to Mr. Azhar’s excellent speaking skills.

He started off with posing questions at the audience and segregating them into categories based on their interests, dislikes, flaws, strengths etc. The most interesting part was when every student was handed a chart paper and given four to five minutes and instructed to sketch themselves and list their likes, dislikes etc on it. The results were astoundingly interesting. After the sketching was done and over with Mr. Azhar instructed half the people to line up on one side of the lecture hall and the other half on the other. He then told everyone to put the spare sides of their chart papers on their backs and tape them then get as many people as possible to write on it.

After this was done a few more activities commenced, by the end of it Mr. Azhar expressed his regrets about not having been able to stay more and refreshments were served by the amazing ACM executives then finally after a group photograph and yet another fun activity the students made off to their homes and hostels.

-Dua Anjum

CODE BAR

ACM once again organized an event that was of a great value. The main focus was basically on bridging the gap between academics and the IT industry, the problems that newly graduated students face and how to remain updated with what the market demands? Moreover the talk also focused on how Code Bar helps in training students to develop the skills.

The talk started with witty questions from the audience. And became very interesting when solutions to Questions like “Why only 20 people are employed from a recently passed out batch of 120?” were discussed. The speaker talked about giving more time to developing a good CV and not a “transcript”. Simply students were instructed to precisely mention their experiences and achievements, not ambiguous qualifications. Focus on industry related skills, practical work; projects were labeled as most significant by the speaker.

So overall the main idea was to help students become industry oriented and acceptable. I must say that it was a great initiative by ACM to help students resolve the ambiguity regarding getting jobs after graduation.

Report By: Hira Farooq

LEGO WORKSHOP

As we are living in the age of modern technology where every minute new inventions are surprising the mankind, so in order to cope the needs of understanding this advancement in technology ACM- SEECS Chapter arranged the work shop named as “Robotics workshop for future Doctors and Engineers” from 22^nd to 23^rd November in Basic Electronic Lab – SEECS – NUST. 

The main purpose of this workshop was to develop the understanding among people about the application of programming. The participants were supposed to make their own robots using Lego Kits and then program them for different tasks.

Our Faculty Advisor Dr. Sohail Iqbal who is known for his specialization in Surgical Robotics and Mathematical Modeling helped and motivated us a lot to organize such an event for the understanding of Mechatronics. The beautiful cover for this event is as follows:

The workshop went quite amazing. The passion and enthusiasm among people was commendable. Every participant worked hard in the form of teams to make their own robots and programmed them for different activities. One of the most amazing thing about this event was that a team from EME-NUST also joined and it was awesome to interact with them. So after the construction of robots, different competitions were held and participants along with the people who arranged this event, enjoyed a lot.




REPORT BY:
UMER AHMAD MEHTAB
VICE CHAIR ED. BOARD
ACM-SEECS CHAPTER

ACM NCSC BOOK BANK PROJECT

Overview:
The ACM-NCSC Book Bank project is the first of its kind, aiming solely to benefit the students all over the NUST campus. ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) is working in collaboration with NCSC (NUST Community Service Club) on this project.

The Team:
Sir Irtiza, the NCSC’s faculty advisor is the main helping hand and our mentor behind making this possible since he’s the one who facilitated us in getting the initial permissions for the project from the NUST authorities.

ACM ASWAN Chair Bushra Illahi, Vice Chair Usama Pervaiz, and NCSC president Rida Aleem are responsible for all the other affairs related to the NUST Book Bank.
The project coordinator was Arslan Ahmed. Apart from that, Mam Maheen also supervised the project and we would also like to thank Guljabeen Khan for her help.

Volunteers:
The volunteers for this project were:
Haroon Afridi
(NS3H)
Inamullah Khan
(NS3H)
Maleeha Baluch
(NS3H)
Zainab Sohail
(NS3H)
Mohammad Farrae
(SMME)
Khadija Munir
(SADA)
Sundus Zafar
(NS3H)
Zarak Khan
(NBS)
Fatima Khalid
(SCME)
Aamna Nadeem
(SADA)
Ramsha Munir
(NS3H)
Syed Umar Jawad
(SMME)
Sameen Mohsin
(NS3H)
Fattaah Haider
(SMME)

Project Leaders:

Mission:

Our mission is to help all our fellow Nustians in their academic struggle.
ACM’s core aims and objectives highlight the deliverance of career resources that help in the advancement of computing as a science and a profession, and this project of ours is in line with these goals, since the core concept of this project is to facilitate the students who find it difficult to purchase so many books each semester for each course. Not knowing which book to go for, they end up relying only on the course material provided by the instructors (slides, lectures etc.), which consequently effects their grades.
Our idea is to provide willing seniors with a platform through which they can help the juniors simply by giving them relevant books. We have so many books lying around that are of no use to us, why not give them to someone who can benefit from them instead of letting layers of dust accumulate on them?

Benefits:
The help would go both ways since the seniors would be awarded credit hours for their "Community Service" course in exchange of the books they donate.

The credit hours would be allocated as follows:

•  5 credit hours if you donate 1 course books. 
•  1/2 credit hour if you donate any other book (e.g. fiction novels etc.)

 The implementation of the above proposed scheme has already been put into action. Others students interested can register merely by donating three books; in return they will become a member of Book Bank, getting access to all the books in the book bank. Once the NUST Book Bank is established, it will follow "Donate One Get One" policy, which will enable students to donate old books and get new ones in return, and thereby benefiting their academic prospects through increased knowledge-related resources. ACM marketing team is working really hard to promote this project on social media as well as within the various schools of NUST by holding seminars, putting up banners and making people aware in general about the benefits. Once established this project surely has a lot of potential to expand and cover other areas related to academic and career possibilities where our peers need help and guidance.

Collection of Books:
 The first phase of this project is the collection of books. The first phase is already in progress.

•  SMME:
  
  
  
  
  
  
   Book Donation Drive was conducted in SMME on 28th, 29th October, 2014. The response was really great.

 NBS: Book Donation Drive was conducted in NBS on 28th, 29th October, 2014.

 SADA: Book Donation Drive was conducted in SADA on 30th, 31stOctober, 2014.

 SCME: Book Donation Drive was conducted in SCME on 30th, 31stOctober, 2014.

 CAFES: Book donation drive was also conducted in cafes on 8th and 11th Nov, 2014.

 HOSTELS: Book drive was conducted in boys and girls hostel. It was started from 17th October, 2014 and it is still in progress.

In only three weeks, Book Donation Drive is able to collect more than 1400 books. Due to the over-whelming response, the plan is to set up more donation desks in future. We are looking forward to inaugurate NUST Book Bank soon.

-Amna Aziz