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UTSAV GANDHI

campus@technewsiit.com

TechNews | Tuesday,Apri123,2013

CMC semester achievements include new logo design

Utsav Gandhi
CAMPUS EDITOR

The Career Management Center at IIT
has had a very busy semester, hosting one of
the largest career fairs yet, organizing many
runeup events leading up to it in order to help
get students prepared for the event, a couple of
very successful etiquette dinners, leading up
to a welleattended career connections event
for students hoping to get internships for the
summer, and ﬁnally launching a logo redesign
competition for NaceLink, the online job portal
with listing tailored exclusively for IIT students

The semester began with the appointment
of Andre’s Garza as executive director of the
Career Management Center (CMC)? Garza
previously served as director of the Ofﬁce of
Career Services at the University of Illinois
at Chicago (UIC) for more than 19 years,
managing staff that provide all aspects of career
counseling and organize onecampus recruiting
for more than 27,000 students As the semester
progressed students were invited to a special
presentation to hear ‘words of wisdom’ from
three individuals with more than 200 years of
combined corporate experience, talking about

what it’s really like to transition from student
to professional These were the real life stories
of Bruce Mueller, Bob Anderson, and Myron
Gottlieb at a CMC presentation on Monday,
March 41 These individuals have years of
experience in academia or industry and had
many practical tips on structuring our careers,
starting from college?

For the second time in a row, the IIT
Career Fair reached maximum capacity with
167 employers offering more than 3500 jobs,
including 54% of employers offerng jobs to
international students To help students prepare
better for the event, the CMC held some
unique sessions in etiquette, resume critique,
networking with confidence, researching
industry and companies, as well as formal
dress and app earanceI In a unique promotional
event, Paul Mitchell Hairstyle Salon from the
UIC area dropped by to offer free haircuts and
also to announce deals for students Mary Kay,
a trusted global name in skin care, makeup &
body care was on campus before the career fair
as well, offering some great tips on latest beauty
advice, makeup trends, virtual makeover &
professional dress to impress strategies Finally,
there was a 50% discount for IIT students
announced at Men’s Warehouse for suits These

are great initiatives and one hopes that the
CMC will continue to get more such deals set
up for IIT students to take advantage of When
the Career Management Center surveys the
companies that have attended the IIT Career
Fair, the company representatives say the same
thing: IIT students are exceedingly smart and
polite but are not prepared to talk about the
company itself or the industry they are in? A
Career Fair Pro Tips Guide was created by
librarians at Paul V Galvin Library, usingwhich
students could find company and industry
information that were aimed to differentiate,
including threats and opportunities in an
industry, or about a company’s strategy and
future direction? This could be helpful in
indicating an interest in the industry and having
a conversationbeyond just the student’s activity
proﬁle and personal interest level The CMC
also hosted a campusewide Professional Dress
Day on Tuesday, February 12, 2013? Faculty
and staff members who came to work that day
in professional attire were asked to pick up and
wear an “Ask me about my outﬁt" sticker The
objective was to get students to be able to see
different outﬁts that exemplify professional
attire and ask faculty and staff members’
questions about their professional dress

As a followup for students who were
still looking for internships for the summer,
the CMC also hosted “Career Connections"
in partnership with the INTM department,
so that they may be exposed to opportunities
at networking events conducted at least
once during each Fall and Spring semester
Employers usuallybring up to 3 representatives
to speak with potential candidates as well as
conduct on the spot interviews

The CMC also organized successful
Boeing and Chase Etiquette Dinners on
campus, with industry representatives from
both companies coming in to talk about
their work, opportunities for students, career
planning advice as well as get trained on how
to survive a professional lunch or dinner
meeting coinciding with the interview which
might just change your life? These were very
well attended and gave students some great
insights into lessons they can hope to learn
by simple networking or even at internships
Finally, towards the end of the semester, the
CMC launched a NaceLink logo competition
to rename Nacelinkr This is open to all current
HT students and the winners who will be
announced later this week will be receiving a
$200 cash prize?

||T students advance to ﬁnals of |dea2 Product

Utsav Gandhi
CAMPUS EDITOR

Four teams of IIT students
competed in the Idea to Product (I2P)
Regional Competition in St? Louis, M0 on
April 6th? The IIT teams competed against
12 teams from the Midwest and swept the
ﬁeld, with all four IIT teams making up the
ﬁnal four in the competition? The winning
IIT team, who will advance to the 121’ Global
Competition in Sao Paulo, Brazil in November,
is made up of Darya Ivankina (BSBA ’13, with a
concentration in Marketing and Finance), IIT
Stuart School ofBusiness; Yi Lu (MSF ’14), IIT
Stuart School of Business; Alex Stiles (MMAE
’12), IIT Armour College of Engineering and
Mauro Leos (MS IPMM ’13), IIT Chicago,
Kent College of Law

The competition involved the team
sending in an initial two page business plan and

then subsequently a ﬁve page full plan to pitch
their business idea in order to be considered
for the competition? The winningteam pitched
their company, Samambu LLC, which markets
and distributes AbhadiTM, a thin, ﬂexible
100% nonwoven bamboo ﬁber mat that can
be combined with plastics and formed into
everything from furniture to appliances to
sunglasses to parts for automobiles As a B2B
company, Samambu LLC operates within the
“composites innovators" category, with a goal
to disrupt the plastics industry and bring
about lasting global change? Their primary
client and suppliers are based in Central
and South America, due to the abundance
of natural resources Low shipment costs, a
strong, ﬂexible, foamable and durable material
product, an objective to reduce the amount
of plastic by over 50%, and availability in
different colors made the product all the more
attractive? They are currently based off a small
manufacturing R&D facility with help from

small designer studios, the Institute of Design,
the College of Architecture and the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago?

Alex Stiles was the one with the
original idea over a year back, but it was
the entrepreneurial guidance along with the
sound advice regarding strategy, business,
marketing, insurance and cost factors by Nik
Rokop, managing director of the IIT Stuart
Knapp Entrepreneurship Center, which really
took them so further on into the competition.
The challenge included working on visibility,
funding and credibility for investors; as well
as pitching the product for seed funding
from venture capitalists to set up equipment
and R&D lab testing space? The team also
recently advanced to the ﬁnal round of the
Tepper Venture Challenge, hosted by Carnegie
Mellon’s Undergraduate Entrepreneurship
Association? As part of their 121’ Regional
victory, the team received a check for $2,500
to support their starteupr In Brazil they will be

required to have an actual prototype to show
manufacturers how the product works and is
manufactured

The remaining three finalist teams
from IIT were all from the Biomedical
Engineering department at IIT Armour
College of Engineering, and were coached
by Prof Jennifer KangEMieler, Prof Derek
Kamper, and Nik Rokopr

One of the team members, Darya,
indicated how incredibly beneﬁcial it is to
use the startup community in Chicago as
well as the resources available on campus for
students to start their own businesses while
in college? With faculty, aluan mentors and
resources like the Idea Shop; her team could
really apply the business operations and
strategy lessons she learned in her classes to
an actual application while learning how to
work on an interdisciplinary team with real
world deadlines

AIAS round table discusses ‘repositioning'

Neesha Narayanan
TECHNEWS WRITER

A few days ago I had an opportunity
attend one of the round table discussions by
IIT’s chapter of the American Institute of
Architecture Students (AIAS)I I was informed
about the topic that was goingto be debated and
its current status as a discussion at aprofessional
level as well: the topic being “repositioning’I It
is interesting how this kind topic becomes a
dialogue on the issue of relevancy not just to
academia but to the architectural profession as
a whole? In fact the discussion’s core was that
of how do we deﬁne new architecture in the
21stcentury?

What needs to be changed to make
architecture education better so that people can
create their own perspective of what architecture
is for them? Can edits in curriculum promote
changes needed to redeﬁne a new architecture?
Changing certain aspects of the curriculum
seems to be a promising opportunity to build
a bridge between academy and practice? The
new architecture has to prepare architects to
deal with more complex problems, understand
aspects like global relations, significance of
structure and aesthetics, and design more
innovativelyr Historically it had been an
individual planning out to the core of the project
like a composer and others following? Now that
conception does not ﬁt along with the complex
environment that we are currently confronting

Today, we need a team involving architects,
developers and engineers to work together;
also, to express creative solutions to the built
environment There is an immense necessity
for communication and collaboration for every
facet of the ﬁeld to work for the requirements
of the clients

In a team of architects, everyone thinks
that their design works the best and that their
ideas should be implemented, hence many
different good ideas collide with each other
They don’t have the ability to combine all
the different ideas and working with other
disciplines is like working with two year
olds This ﬁeld of architecture is not a room
full of drafters anymore in fact, there is a
necessity for diversiﬁcation, where the team is
compiled with various professionals The main
question is how to continue crossedisciplinary
work? Is there a way or a structure that can
be implemented to get this? In architecture
major, design is an ongoing process, there
is never a right answer, while other majors
have definite things The work ethic of an
architecture student is rooted to the process of
making things better and better but ultimately
getting the work done, as there is no full stop
in architecture? The classroom, in no doubt,
provides the experience of ﬁnding the essence
of architecture, but not everything can be taught
inside a classroom? We all know there is more
to architecture as we get into real life situations,
the complexity increases drastically To get that
understanding of working professionally, 5 years
seems short? The experience of combining the

knowledge gained during the course to that of
the professional ethics comes when we confront
situation similar to real life? Universities say that
internships are great opportunities for this but
not many implement it? Internships are more
like mentorship and guidance that prepare the
students to what’s there at the end of their 5 year
course? Not all students have the knowledge
of how the process works after they graduate?
Even a week of internship is incredibly valuable
for the students to observe and understand the
profession better and also to gain skills to deal
with people with different professions

Redefining architecture is a complex
process as it involves so many elements that
have to be considered? The stage at which
this profession has reached, architects cannot
afford miscommunication between themselves,
the contractor and mainly the client? The
need and signiﬁcance for collaboration and
communication in this profession is brought
to the limelight again? It also brings us to the
question of whether is it architects fault if there
is any fault in the building or someone else
who is involved with the building process It
opens the possibility of another issue of blaming
others, rather than pointing the problem to
others it is better to except the problem and
claim to solve it? As an architect, it is easier to
transfer from one thing to another; these are
people who adapt to any kind of situation hence
acknowledging the ability of problem solving,
which keeps the profession running?

Another aspect that was discussed

regarding pushing architecture to the next
level while keeping the essence of it was how
to make design more accessible to general
public? Should there be more small ﬁrms that
emphasizes on bringing design to general
public? The functionality and other variables
like budget regarding the structure that is being
built inﬂuence the perspective of the people?
The question is what is important to public if
cost is out? The notion of having a style is not
new to architects To bring design to people
along with conception of style, architects need
to give signiﬁcance to the people who are going
to occupy that space? Being successful in this
profession depends signiﬁcantly on the fact
that the client/occupant feels satisﬁed with the
creation ofthe architect? A good design does not
have to be really fancy but that design can be
cost efﬁcient, sustainable and just could adore
simplicity

These deep and concentrated issues
regarding what good design involves and
how to present it to the public have multiple
solutions? Having this kind of intense topics
with a time span that seems to be so short, the
students involved in this discussionbrought out
some signiﬁcant opinions and ideas regarding
“repositioning" of what a new architect is and
the responsibilities associated? From what I got
from the meeting, I feel that there is no end
to this kind of discussion as there is always
nevereending ideas and opinion coming out all
the time, which I think is an element that is in
blood of architecture?