The Department of Computer Science has been one of the integral parts of Swamy Saswathikananda College, from its childhood. Looking past to the history, the computer science department has grown up to a level at which it is now offering Masters in Computer Science to its post-graduation scholars. Analyzing the track-records, graduates from the department includes IT professionals, teachers, professors, banking professionals, government employees, and even well-renowned artists.  The Computer Science Association (CSA) has played a key role in mentoring such personalities by many extra-curricular activities. IT festivals, quiz competitions, poster creation, technical talks, IT workshops and seminars, etc. conducted by CSA help the students to pull out the hidden strength and potential of the students. CSA is planning to explore new dimensions of activities to help students to get in touch with both industry and research platforms.

Association for the Students, by the Students, and Of the Students 

Apart from academics, the complete CSA activities are coordinated by the students. The role of teachers in CSA is only to give suggestions and support the activities. Planning, coordination, and implementation of each of its activities is done by the students. The whole management of activities are supposed to be left with the students with an insight that planning and coordinating CSA activities will help students to get a real feel and hands-on experience in coordinating real-life activities. Involving in such ‘real’ activities will help students to improve their courage, willpower, and confidence. Moreover, the guidance and suggestions of teachers will help them to identify the key areas of management and help them to coordinate events without flaw.

The Activities

The association is involved in organizing both academic and non-academic activities. As part of academic activity, CSA is conducting seminars and technical talks, and IT workshops which will either be taken by the academically outstanding students or other eminent personalities from other renowned institutions. Regular conduct of seminars has proved to be an effective aid to improve vocabulary, communication skill, and presentation style of the students, which in turn will make the presentation of the general seminars in the final semester of their course of study a brilliant one.  Apart from that, interaction with external resource personal through workshops and technical talks will bring the students technically forward, and help them to get an insight about the recent advancements in technology and the latest trends and innovations in IT sector.

Monthly quiz competition which is conducted in between the CSA members will not only boost their general awareness about IT sector and its developments, but also will make them technically fit to appear for and other national level tests and interviews. Word-hunt event which is conducted in association with the quiz help the students to be prepared to tackle upcoming IT festivals in other colleges. Participants of all these academic events are rewarded with surprise gifts, which will make them happy and meet their general academic needs.

Apart from these academic activities, CSA has other dimension of exploration like IT festivals, cultural programs, poster creation, and so on. These activities are envisaged with an insight to boost the soft skills of the students.

Towards New Dimensions

CSA is now widening its area of activities to include industry orientation programs and research orientation programs. As of now, students lack from adequate training in hottest technologies being implemented in IT industry. CSA has a plan to incorporate more technical workshops so that students will get ‘real’ hands-on experience in latest technologies, programming languages, and frameworks. This is being planned in connection with the placement cell of the institution, which is currently handling all the placement related activities. CSA is expecting a drastic growth in the placement rate on implementation of the same, since the students are supposed to be ‘industry-ready’ with this program.

Interaction with research scholars from prominent R&D laboratories and universities is also under consideration, which might motivate the post-graduate students for higher studies. We hope that exploring these new dimensions will give an entirely new definition to CSA and will surely help itself to grow beyond all its frontiers.