Building Competence: TEQIP III at IIM Raipur

          Raipur //    IIM Raipur concluded the eighth TEQIP III training at its campus on 21^st June, 2019. Nineteen Professors from different engineering colleges like NIT Kurukshetra; NIT Durgapur; Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana and several others participated in intellectually charged sessions for five days.

             The program directors Prof. RK Jana and Prof. Jagrook Dawra designed the program to build competencies in the areas of interpersonal skills, teaching skills, managerial skills and administrative skills. There was an attempt to demonstrate how an individual professor’s aspirations depend upon his organization’s goals and objectives and how they can symbiotically co-exist. The overarching goal of the program was to help engineering professors be more effective in their organizations.

The program started with an overview of Mission, Vision and Objectives of an engineering college. The participants were encouraged to understand and appreciate the mission and vision of their Institutes. Prof. Parikshit Charan, who facilitated the session demonstrated how everything in an organization should be integrated with the mission and vision of the Institute.

Prof. Bharat Bhasker, Director, IIM Raipur focussed his session on how governance in academia can be made more transparent and fair. He also focussed on how efficiency and effectiveness can be enhanced in the academic system and how this can lead to competency building of students. This was further reinforced by Prof. Vinay Goyal who spoke on GFR rules and Prof. SK Mitra who spoke at length on the procurement processes in government organizations. Prof. Sumeet Gupta conducted two sessions that were more specific to the operations of a government funded engineering institution namely use of ERP systems to enhance the efficiency of the institution and need to re-invent Library to make it more relevant. Footfalls in libraries have drastically gone down in the last few years because information is available to students on their fingertips. If libraries have to reinvent themselves and be relevant in these changing times, they have to do something significantly different.

Research and Development is another important function that our Institutions perform. While India ranks 7^th in the world on number of research papers published, its ranking falls down to 21^st in terms of quality or impact it has on other research. Funding for research is one of the major bottlenecks in executing ambitious projects. While there are several government and non-government sources of funding available, they are not used because people do not know about them. Prof. Jana focussed his session in doing just that.

Teaching is the most important function that a professor performs in an engineering college. A good teacher is able to engage the students and add value. Many engineering students, however, find their sessions to be dry and boring. The biggest reason for this is that most engineering faculty use monotonous lectures as the dominant mode of teaching. Professor Jagrook Dawra helped the participants appreciate other forms of pedagogy like problem/ project based learning, case based learning and experiential learning that can potentially increase student engagement and make the learning more interesting for students.

Last but not the least, the changing times have put extraordinary demands on an engineering professor who should now be able to work in teams and build interpersonal relations with others. He should also be able to manage stress and maintain a good work-life balance. Prof. Sanjeev Prashar’s impactful sessions forced the participants to introspect and embark on a journey of self-improvement.

The program ended by the participants’ sharing their experience from their workplace and relating them with what they had learnt over the past five days. They also presented how they would use the knowledge that they had gained at IIM Raipur in making their workplace better.