Jadavpur University has to intensify its efforts to reach out to former students to attract significant funds, the varsity’s vice-chancellor said at a meeting with an alumni platform on Friday.

At a meeting organised by a US-based alumni foundation on the campus on Friday evening, VC Chiranjib Bhattacharjee underscored the need to strengthen and structure the university’s two-year-old alumni cell.

Pro-VC Amitava Datta, who heads the cell, pointed out at the meeting that JU has collected about ₹8 crore from its former students over the past two years. In comparison, IIT Kharagpur received a contribution of ₹10 crore from single alumnus in August last year.

JU, which has a large alumni base, is significantly behind IIT Kharagpur in mobilising contributions from former students, VC Bhattacharjee said.

He attributed the gap to a weak outreach drive by the university’s alumni cell.

“It’s time that the cell is structured,” he said.

The programme, titled Meet and Greet, was held to discuss ways to improve alumni connect, which could lead to scaling up the scope of contributions from former students of the university.

“We have to structure our alumni cell so that we can reach out to former students on a scale similar to the IITs. The university must convey that the alma mater values its alumni. Once that bond is forged, it encourages former students to give back,” Bhattacharjee said.

VC Bhattacharjee said: “I did my PhD at IIT Kanpur three decades ago, but the way they keep in touch makes me feel like one of them. We should connect this way, not just occasionally.”

The fact that the alumni disconnect has been a major drawback for JU became clear at the alumni meet held last Saturday.

Suman Chakraborty, a mechanical engineering alumnus from the class of 1996 and the current director of IIT Kharagpur, lamented the absence of dialogue in his batch’s WhatsApp group concerning the alumni meet.

“I am part of the alumni WhatsApp group of the mechanical engineering department. Today’s global alumni meet was not announced in the group, which shows that alumni outreach remains fragmented. If we want to leverage what JU collectively aims to achieve, then these are small, small things one could look into,” he said in his lecture.

Chakraborty emphasised the need to translate “pride and nostalgia” for his alma mater into “actual and structured networking”.

At Friday’s meeting, Subhadeep Das, director and secretary of the alumni foundation, said the foundation wanted to work with the university to implement the suggestions offered by the IIT Kharagpur director.

The VC said he would be meeting with the foundation to explore how those suggestions could be applied.

“We have to scale up the scope of contributions that the university is seeking. The alumni cell has to make its presence on the social media handles with success stories,” said Bhattacharjee.

“The problem with JU is that here, a platform of former students liaises with other former students so that they donate to JU. But the university does not connect with the former students. This mindset has to be dispelled,” he told Metro.

Pro-VC Datta said the IIT director was right in saying JU engagement with the former students “remains fragmented”.

“We have readied a plan for restructuring our alumni cell. I hope that the plan will be approved at the next meeting of the university’s executive council,” he said.