IIT Bombay makes mental health course mandatory for first-year students

Prof Kedare was speaking to the media on Friday to announce that IIT Bombay, in partnership with the Department of Higher Education, is hosting the two-day National Wellbeing Conclave 2025 on November 22-23. The conclave will bring together representatives from 79 higher education institutions for workshops, seminars and panel discussions on improving student wellbeing on campuses. Participating institutions will also showcase initiatives that have shown positive outcomes.

As part of its broader efforts, IIT Bombay has set up the ‘Flourishing Hub’ — a joint initiative with the 1998 alumni batch — with a dedicated team conducting activities and workshops on mental health and well-being.

The mental health and well-being course, launched in August 2025 along with the arrival of the new first-year batch, also comes under the Flourishing Hub. Prof Deepak Marla, Vice-Chairperson of the Student Wellness Centre and Prof In-charge of the Flourishing Hub, said, “While the course includes wellness workshops, those offered for Semester I include topics such as life skills, promotion of healthy habits, awareness against substance abuse, mental health, stress management etc. Whereas Semester II workshops will be more about helping students for personal growth in life.”

Prof Suryanarayana Doolla, Dean of Student Affairs, added, “One of the biggest stress for students is about life after IIT. More than academics, they are worried about internships, placements, higher education opportunities etc.”

Apart from the course, the Flourishing Hub also conducts workshops for faculty advisors, trains student mentors and is now working toward including mentor support from alumni, as most students want guidance on life after IIT Bombay.

The IIT Bombay is also taking steps toward rejigging the Teaching Learning Assessment (TLA) systems to make it relevant and effective in changing times where Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part. The idea according to Prof. Kedare is to make the teaching learning process more effective by making it activity oriented rather than old school classroom teaching. “Accordingly 10 classrooms gave been revamped with new age infrastructure to conduct engaging classes, wherein focus in on holding activities, workshops and assignments in class as a lot of information is already accessible to students. Furthermore the institute is holding changing pedagogy workshops for teachers,” he said.