On Saturday, July 30, 2016 students who spent the Summer 2016 semester at BRAC University, Savar Campus as part of their Residential Semester participated in an interactive session with a distinguished guest, Ms Shammi Shawkat Quddus, Member of the Research Transparency team at MIT’s Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
For students it is the last week before they return to Dhaka at the end of semester and they had this unique opportunity to know about the motivating experience of Ms Shammi Quddus on their last session at Savar campus. As an undergraduate in 2008, Shammi co-founded BYLC’s (Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center’s) flagship program Building Bridges Through Leadership Training. She won the Davis Projects for Peace Prize and an MIT Public Service Fellowship which provided seed funding for the pilot program that has since grown to the premier leadership institute we know today as BYLC.
Shammi told students how from a high school graduate from Chittagong, just because of ambition and willingness to go out of her comfort zone, she was able to pursue for her undergraduate degree in Environmental Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Each day she worked hard to shape herself and to get out of her comfort zone, took new challenges and developed leadership skill to become a confident individual.
She inspired students with her own story that after an UG degree in engineering, she is now a dual degree graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School and Stanford Graduate School of Business where she is pursuing an MPA/ID (Masters Public Administration in International Development) and an MBA respectively. She is also a Dubin Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School where she is studying leadership under the mentorship of leading faculty in the field. And she is a recipient of the Zonta International Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship 2014 which is awarded to only 12 women globally every year. She advised students to plan for their lives as early as now to make the best use of their time during university life. She encouraged students to make “coming out of their comfort zone as a way of life”.
On the other hand students shared their wonderful experience at Savar Campus. The Residential Semester (RS) at Savar is aimed to teach students things like diversity, good governance, history and culture, and encourages students to engage in debate, recitation, cultural activities, sports, yoga, indoor games. It also creates awareness of social issues and awareness against drug abuse etc. RS teches importance of friendship, respecting each others’ views and coexist in diversity.
Residential Semester (RS), compulsory for all students of BRAC University, is a requirement for the fulfilment of their degree. It aims at improving students’ communication skills, leadership skills, patriotism, morality and global competitiveness. RS strives to provide this opportunity to the students of BRAC University and aims at shaping the students into responsible human beings. This unique programme among the private universities of Bangladesh, provides students with opportunities to meet and closely interact with people from varied backgrounds. Each semester, over 500 students spend about 3 months at the BRAC University residential campus at Savar.