Last Updated: December 1, 2022
In the continuation of our Women Application Mentoring schemes like Magadarshi, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has implemented various mentoring schemes to help women students, once they integrate our institution.
We believe at Amrita that mentoring can be an incredibly useful tool to encourage girls and women’s growth and help them realize their full potential.
In 2022, 83% of women have participated in mentorship programs at Amrita in Undergraduate and Post-graduate levels.
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham offers different mentoring schemes to uplift women students:
Several of our schemes are available both for staff and students. In each of these schemes, at least 10% of female students are participating.
Team Shakti is a group of budding young female minds who have joined together for the cause of bringing about a change in the field of cyber-security. Established as a Capture The Flag team, the team works tirelessly to spread knowledge and make a contribution to balance the prevalent gender gap in the field.
Team Shakti works on the principle of team peer mentoring where the senior members mentor the juniors. Members support and help each other ultimately making the entire team stronger.
Since its foundation in 2019 by Shri Vipin Pavithran, Team Shakti has been recognized to be the only CTF team in India that exclusively comprises female students.
TeamShakti proudly organized in 2022 the third consecutive ShaktiCTF, an ethical competition organized for women in cybersecurity, in partnership with Amrita Center for Cybersecurity Systems. It is a 24-hour cybersecurity competition held on the 9th and 10th of December 2022.
The event attracted a total of 955 participants, including 743 contestants organized into 243 teams and 500 individual participants. The competition featured 35 challenges spanning diverse categories such as Reversing, Web Exploitation, Forensics, Cryptography, Binary Exploitation, and Miscellaneous, resulting in a remarkable 4086 submissions. Notably, nine women-only teams also participated, demonstrating a commitment to inclusivity. The top honors went to CeSeNA-Ulisse-Girls, who secured the 1st prize, followed by Onii-Chan in 2nd place, and Pwnrpuff Girls taking the 3rd prize.
The competition ended with ShaktiCon.
Since 2020, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita Cybersecurity, Amrita Technology) has been organizing Shakticon, a completely free global conference focused on inspiring, training, and upskilling women in cybersecurity.
ShaktiCon includes keynote sessions, training, contests, and workshops. The 3-day conference last year attracted over 5000 participants from over 72 countries, and featured over 35 talks and trainings from the best in industry.
Born out of an understanding that cultural circumstances do not always encourage women to flourish in male dominated fields, ShaktiCon is committed to creating a suitable environment to showcase the range of women’s talents in cybersecurity.
In September 2022, several trainings were organized as well prior to the conference:
Automation of reversing challenges, Introduction to SQL Injection, Introduction to Shellcoding introduction to Blockchain & PQC, Introduction to Digital Forensics.
Example of post on social media:
Amrita School of Social and Behavioural Sciences started in Aug 2022 the first Women PhD student support group facilitated by Dr Martha Miller, Adjunct Professor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, and Faculty Director at the UCLA Anderson Women Leadership’s Institute.
The first group consists of 3 women PhD students of the School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, out of 12 women PhD students. They meet at least once in a month. In October 2023, already 16 sessions have been successfully conducted.
The goal of peer mentoring is to cultivate a nurturing environment of mutual support and compassion by engaging in empathetic and focused listening, being fully present in mind and heart. In peer mentoring sessions, whether conducted virtually or in person, each female PhD participant is given a designated time to speak. The individual in focus expresses their current emotional state, discusses the challenges they are encountering in their professional or personal life, and articulates specific research-related issues they are endeavoring to resolve. Fellow group members provide attentive listening, offer support, and, when feasible, suggest potential pathways for the person to progress.
“Dr Martha’s support group has been a pivotal contributor towards my holistic development. A safe space to brainstorm as well as vent out my concerns and emotions. A sense of ‘you are not alone’ in this Ph.D journey is a great relief.” Meenu Prakash, PhD Student in Social Sciences
Amrita CIR (Corporate and Industry Relations) department has been continuously organizing training and mentoring sessions for students to encourage their growth and help them realize their full potential. Our women students can all benefit from these trainings to develop themselves, gain inner confidence and strength for their future career endeavors.
The table below gives examples of the existing training and mentoring themes.
| FUNCTIONS | ||
| LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT CIR has been conducting training in the three major areas of Life skills – Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal and Communication Skills and Soft Skills…»» | SOFT SKILLS Training in the area of Soft Skills is offered to students of Engineering, Management, as well as other disciplines like Computer Applications, Social Work, and Arts & Sciences…»» | VERBAL & COMMUNICATION SKILLS CIR has been conducting training in the three major areas of Life skills – Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal and Communication Skills and Soft Skills….»» |
| QUANTITATIVE AND LOGICAL REASONING SKILLS Quantitative tests are conducted by companies as part of the recruitment process to assess the candidate’s decision-making abilities,…»» | CORE COMPETENCY TRAINING – TECHNICAL SKILLS Plan, coordinate and execute core technical training across all engineering branches for B.Tech, MTech and MCA students. The technical domains would include:…»» | HIGHER LEARNING INITIATIVES CIR has been conducting training in the three major areas of Life skills – Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal and Communication Skills and Soft Skills….»» |
| FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY Many companies who recruit from Amrita, often send students to other countries for training and projects…»» | CAREER GUIDANCE Students often seek to clarify their career goals while in the campus. Some of them have career goals that need alignment inputs…»» | PLACEMENTS CIR strives to achieve excellent placement of students each year….»» |
| ENGINEERING Placement for students of engineering, arts, science and allied courses are handled by one group of experts with Head-Placement at the top…»» | MANAGEMENT In order to fulfill the career aspirations of the students, it was found necessary for them to have expert assistance in specific areas, beyond their regular academic training…»» | CORPORATE RELATIONS The Corporate Relations function has to be all-encompassing as it has to serve varying needs of multiple disciplines and centre of the University…»» |
| CORPORATE COMMUNICATION Corporate Communication is being undertaken by CIR on behalf of the university with the sole objective of impacting visibility in print and electronic media through regular write-ups like features, event reports, etc….»» | CORPORATE TRAINING CIR has evolved specific corporate training programmes covering areas like leadership development, organizational development, change management, stress management,…»» | AMRITA CENTRE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP Developing entrepreneurship skills amongst students has gained ground in recent times. Most futuristic models of education are focused towards creating graduates who would not just take a job,…»» |
The Center for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment is a research and academic center dedicated to promoting gender equality and fostering women’s empowerment, using technology and other innovative methods. Our center offers diverse courses on key focus areas, pilot radical ideas, and collaborate with leading universities and institutions to advance the initiatives. It also hosts the activities of India’s UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment and offers a wide range of opportunities for students to participate in research, academic and field projects.
AmritaSREE (Self-Reliance, Employment & Empowerment) is a network of Self Help Groups managed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham & the Mata Amritanandamayi Math that is based on the training of women to shift them from dependence to self-reliance, building trust and confidence between members. The projects are imbued with the entrepreneurial spirit and cover many areas of action, skill-development, and vocational training programs. Empowerment through loans is also facilitated to individual members to promote community growth.
Amrita CREATE, the education-technology research lab of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, provides tablet-based, technology-driven education in remote villages areas through its rural educational program called Amrita Rural India Tablet-enhanced Education (RITE).