Dr. R.A. Mashelkar, one of the most respected scientists of India, was asked by a correspondent about how the academic institutions could prepare for change, required to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. He said,” You need the right kind of leadership for this. Gujarat Technological University (GTU) is doing this.” That was published in the Mumbai edition of Economic Times of 28th March 2013
The Principal Secretary to Government of Karnataka, Education Department, wrote that a presentation would be made on the experience at GTU in involving technical students for taking up innovative projects. This was in a notice dated 21st May 2014 for a meeting at the Karnataka State Higher Education Council
Dr. Akhilesh Pandey, Chairman of the MP Private Universities Regulatory Commission, Bhopal said,” If the Universities adopt the innovative projects, being operated at GTU , it would be beneficial for them.” This was reported in Daily Bhaskar of Bhopal on 28th May 2014.
When our students, faculty members and we at GTU office learn about the unsolicited praise, being given by eminent persons, outside Gujarat, we feel good. Such praise should immediately remind us about the large gap between what we are able to do today and what the students and faculty members are able to achieve at the great universities of the world.
We completed the examinations in June 2014. This year for the first time, we have been able to declare the results within about a month of the last date of the examinations. But the issues are about the quality of our output.
Why the Bridge: “Students, who are fresh from schools, are more enthusiastic and excited about learning. As they move to second and third year, their interest gets dampened partly due to our curricula, our teaching and learning process and also due to delay in introducing engineering courses. If we have engineering courses to excite them the day they arrive, it keeps their interests alive.”
--- From a mail from Prof P.V.M.Rao,
IIT, Delhi
Note: Students and Faculty Members of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Elements of Engineering (EE) may please see the videos of things, prepared by first year students: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=MEP+101, http://web.iitd.ac.in/~pvmrao/mep_101.htm.
ICT and EE are designed to introduce core engineering areas at an early stage so that the excitement of creation (of things) is not lost as we prepare our students with the skills and additional science courses, which form the basis of engineering.
Each one of the faculty members has to ask himself/ herself the following questions: Were we able to set up papers, which evaluated the understanding rather than rote-learning? Did we assess the answer-books with due care? Did we conduct the practical examinations and viva-voce examinations so that we were able to evaluate every student fairly? The question: “Was I able to provide excellent education to my students?” has to be asked by every Faculty Member to himself/ herself after every lecture, lab or workshop.
For every one of the students, the questions are: “Am I studying every day during the semester, without missing a single class or lab or workshop? Do I behave courteously with all in my college and do I maintain appropriate discipline?”
We at the University have to ask ourselves: “Are we continuously improving our systems for delivery of proper service to all our stake-holders? Are we receptive to feedback, particularly the one, which shows our shortcomings? If a stake-holder, be he/ she a student or a parent or a faculty member, comes to any office of the University, does he/ she go back with satisfaction or not?”
Let us all work so that at the end of the semester, we all should be able to answer the above questions in a positive and satisfactory way. If we are able to do so, we would have moved our University further on the path to becoming a great University
Dr. Akshai Aggarwal
(29th July 2014)