Recently, BITSAA International received an e-mail from a student asking for clarification regarding the Alumina registration fees that he had paid on campus. While the matter was not strictly within BITSAA International’s ambit, we thought it was a good opportunity to help alumni to understand the difference between BITSAA International and BITSAAD which is the department concerned with Alumni Affairs on campus.

Alumni registration fees are raised by the Alumni Division on campus. The utilization of funds goes towards the Director’s Tea Party, Batch snaps, yearbook and so on. The exact details on fund collections and split up of expenditure should be available with the local BITSAAD incharges at Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai.

BITSAA International is a non-profit organization. We have never charged registration/membership or membership fees, nor do we foresee any necessity to do so in  the future for now. All registrations on the BITSAA International website are free and will continue to remain so.

BITSAA International

Many people would be interested to know that BITS Alumni Association International , BITSAA International, was created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Three bitsians, Anupendra Sharma (Eco Instru ’87), Venu Palaparthi (Eco CS ’87) and Sandeep Arora (MMS 87), were working towards a scholarship dedicated to one of their batchmates, SS Seshadri (Eco Civil), who had passed away a few years ago. They met each other in the process of hosting a Music Night in October, 2011 to that effect. But one month before that, on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Centre was attacked. A BITSian, Vamsi Pendyala (’88), was a passenger on the flight from Boston which crashed into the World Trade Center.

In light of recent events, the three founders decided that it was only fitting to create a scholarship in memory of Vamsi Pendyala. Vamsi’s wife and classmates were instantly supportive, and the organizing team grew rapidly. Unfortunately, overcome by grief, Vamsi’s wife took her own life a week later.

Vamsi’s tragedy brought a lot of attention to the Fundraiser at New Jersey. “We owe our entire organization to Vamsi,” Venu says, “In dying, he created an organization.” BITSAA was recognized by BITS in 2003 when the then Director Prof. Venkateshwaran had visited the United States.

BTISAA then grew taking stride after stride. BITSconnect, BITS Connect 2.0, Sandpaper, BITS to MS/PHD, BITS to Bschool, BITSAA Global 30 under 30 just some of the initiatives and good work done by bitsian alumni. You can read more about alumni coming together to help out others on the BITSAA International website.

BITSAAD

Each campus has its own BITS Alumni Affairs Division, BITSAAD is functioning at Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai campuses. BITSAAD maintains liaisons with the alumni and involves them in the development of the university. The division functions as an arm of the campus administration.

The BITS Alumni Affairs Division, established in 2010 connects and engages students, alumni friends and well-wishers to a lifelong relationship with BITS Pilani. The division is working to extend further, the Alumni support to the continuing development of the Institute’s academics, research and off campus programs, expansion and renewal of its facilities, and in providing scholarship and financial aid to students through annual fundraising campaigns. The division generates opportunities for alumni and friends of the institute to extend their time, talent and treasure to enhance the vitality and reputation of BITS Pilani.

The activities conducted by the division during the academic year 2011-12 include

·        Director’s Tea Party

·        Batch Snaps (B.E and M.E)

·        Support for Convocation 2011

·        Registration of graduating students as BITS Alumni

·        Design, procurement, distribution and sale of Institute approved souvenirs

·        Coordinating Scholarship Applications, Travel grants, requests from students for alumni mentoring, etc.

·        Coordinating Alumni Visits

·        Coordinating Lets Promote BITS Pilani (LPBP)

On Campus Talks

On campus talks are an excellent forum for invited speakers from the alumni community to share their experiences with the students’ on-campus

Project Embryo Lectures

Alumni from different field and expertise interact with the students through video lecture. Efforts are made to telecast lectures to all the campuses simultaneously.

The Road Ahead

BITSAA International and BITSAAD are working together to  give back to the University as Alumni, what we received as students. Whether you are a current student, graduating class, alumni or faculty, Please do register on the global BITSian Directory at www.bitsaa.org“

BITSAA Intl is working in sync with the office of alumni affairs to create a cohesive and tightly integrated workflow & infrastructure . Whether you are a current student, graduating class, alumni or faculty, Please do register on the global BITSian Directory – www.bitsaa.org

Sources & Links :

BITSAA Initiatives – http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=initiatives

BITS Connect 2.0 & How it will change things on campus – http://bitsconnect20.bitsaa.org/

http://www.bitsaa.org/news/111339/

BITSAA Global Meet 2014 – http://www.bitsaaglobalmeet.org/

BITSAAD – http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/pilani/alumni

http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/Goa/alumni

http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/hyderabad/alumni

http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/dubai/alumni

Aditya Bhuvaneshwaran, Team Leader – Membership Team, BITSAA International.

The Alumni Membership Team has taken up an initiative to ensure transparency regarding registration numbers and statistics to allow alumni to understand how BITSAA International is growing.  In order to do this, the team has decided to publish monthly statistics, and come with some insights on these numbers. If you have ideas on how we can improve these numbers and bring in more registrations, we are all ears – Shoot out an email to membership-team@bitsaa.org and we will be happy to learn from you.

We will be releasing statistics regarding website usage every 4 months.  Here are the January and May Statistics!

January (May) Statistics

 The total number of users that logged in this month were 263 (224) out of a possible 12559 (12875) members out of which 72% (68%) were from Pilani, 16% (22%) from Goa, 11% (8%) from Hyderabad and 1% (2%) from Dubai.

I would also like to bring to notice that registration numbers this January have decreased compared to previous January.  Steps should be taken to see why this has happened.

With that, I would like to bring this month’s update to an end.  I hope the information here has brought some insight into the bigger picture of how things are moving in BITSAA