IIT Gandhinagar students learn 5 essential non-cognitive skills during FLY-Scholar program
Palaj, Gandhinagar: About 52 students of the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) learnt 5 essential non-cognitive skills of Conscientiousness, Innovativeness, Taking Initiative, Perseverance, and Problem-solving, during the two-day FLY (Finding the Leader in You)-Scholar program held at the Institute on September 14-15, 2019. The program was organised by the Competitiveness Mindset Institute (CMI), a non-profit, education and research institute in the USA.
The FLY-Scholar program is designed to improve the performance of students in the class and subsequently in the workplace, to ultimately improve their employability. The program also builds a foundation of skills for ethical leadership and competitiveness as well as helps amplify the hard skills they learn throughout their student lives. The program consists of activities based on the following four main components – LIFE – i.e Learning, Introspection, Fellowship, and Engagement.
The two-day program was conducted in seven sessions, with group activities like – Socratic seminar, reverse brainstorming, the 3 why techniques along with goal setting, techniques to deal with set-back, and improving upon one’s innovativeness. On the second day of the program, Prof Sudhir Jain, Director, IITGN, also interacted with the participating students. To help students practice and internalise the in-class learning, they were also given off-class activities, which are designed to be done over the course of 4 weeks.
Ms Havovi, Trivedi, Advisor, CMI, Ahmedabad Chapter, shared, “CMI embarks on this exciting journey with the vision to harness the potential within every Indian youth through a change in mindset, enabling them to reach their maximum potential in creativity, perseverance, ability to take initiative along with developing a high level of conscientiousness to bring prosperity to the nation.”
Bharg Mehta, a 4th year BTech Mechanical Engineering student of IITGN and one of the participants of the program said, “This is an exceptionally well-devised program that brought to notice several common traits that are generally neglected by us. Rectifying, inculcating and developing those attributes will surely help me lifelong.”
Sharing his experience, Pratyush Bhatt, a 2nd year BTech Chemical Engineering student of IITGN said, “I had read a book by Jeanne Sharbuno entitled ‘52 Ways to Live Success’. Through this workshop, I got a hands-on experience of what all I had read, and I got a better understanding of it. This will really help me in inculcating these attributes.”
FLY-Scholar program is an innovative program designed by a team of experts in the US for the college level students in India to enable them to internalize, practice and inculcate the big five non-cognitive (soft) skills which empower them to become effective leaders in any of their pursuits. The five non-cognitive skills were identified as the most critical for Indian youth to reach their maximum potential by the first ever nationwide survey of thousands of CEOs, high level government officers, directors and professors of higher educational institutions, media, and NRIs. This study was conducted under the aegis of IIT Gandhinagar through its Competitiveness Mindset Initiative (CMI) and Bankworld Inc, a management consulting company in the US.