Departmental Café Session

The Departmental Café Sessions, an initiative of the Department of Science and Humanities, had its first café on the 12^th of January 2019. The resource persons for the afternoon were Prof. Sanford Mascarenhas who spoke on Gemology, specifically, Diamonds and Prof. Grebian Alemao who made us aware of our Emotional Intelligence.

Starting off the session, Prof. Sanford gave a brief introduction on the formation of gemstones and the difference between a gemstone and a gem. He then spoke about diamonds in specific. He laid out the properties of a diamond saying that it is chemically resistant and has high thermal conductivity, among others. He further increased our knowledge on how to identify a good diamond keeping in mind clarity, colour, cut and carat weight. He ended his session by speaking about synthetic diamonds saying that now due to market value of diamonds, scientists have now begun to make synthetic diamonds by replicating the same conditions required for the formation of a diamond.

For the next half hour, Prof. Grebian Alemao gave a very introspective talk on our Emotional Intelligence at workplace. She defined emotional intelligence as the ability to know how to monitor our emotions and those of others and being able to channel them towards productivity. She then laid out the five domains of EQ as self – awareness, self – regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. To be aware of our emotions at a given point in time is self- awareness. To be able to channel our emotions towards a positive goal is self-regulation. People with high EQ, she said, are great motivators to themselves first and then to others. They also have the ability to understand and feel or empathize with others. She said that those with high EQ have more than average social skills and are able to achieve their goals in a much better way. She then conducted a EQ test for all faculty to make them aware of their EQ score and then laid out ways in which the Emotional quotient can be increased at workplace.