As Indians, everybody is proud about the country's latest engineering brilliance in 'Mangalyaan.' When our biggest competitors in Asia failed, India placed a signature on the Mars in her maiden attempt and created huge buzz in the modern technology by completing the project with just Rs. 424 Crores – the cheapest Mars mission ever! Unquestionably, India is innovating. However, at the underpinning level where the country is in the process of making engineers for tomorrow, things are not looking satisfactory. The industry opines that, from the millions of engineering graduates coming out from the thousands of colleges in the country, only limited number of them is employable. While the statistics of employable engineering graduates are oscillating between 40 and 10 percentages concerning various surveys, it is evident that, the current engineering curriculum that has been using to make the future engineers is not meeting the requirements of our own industries.
Travelling through a different road to provide technical education a new norm is Adhiparasakthi Engineering College, Tamil Nadu. Affiliated to Anna University, Chennai, the college has an Industrial Relations and Placements Department with offices in cities in India that oversee the industry-Institution interaction and placements. The institute is led by Dr. G.B. Senthil Kumar, Correspondent, who says, "Our academic plan is designed as per the international accreditation norms where each program's outcome and objective are specified in terms of attaining communication ability, social consciousness, team work, leadership quality, understanding human values, and professional ethics in addition to imparting designing, analyzing and creative skills in technology." The department is responsible for industry participation in career planning, continuing education and internship for faculty, industrial training for students, industrial visits and tours for students, collaborative programs with industry, guest lecturers from industry, student career development, and entrepreneurship development program among many other things.
In the interest of job opportunities for students, the institute train them in personality development and communication. Along with that, the skills of the students in languages are honed by giving them extra coaching in French, Germany and Hindi as per the requirements of Corporate through Career Guidance Cell. The institute's insistence on a student's uncompromised development allows its students to be a notch above the industry standards, which in effect translates in the form of its placement record. Placements of 2013-14 saw close to 70 companies for recruiting our prospective students. Of these, some names are HP, Cognizant, Infosys, L&T, Saipam, Manali Petrochemicals, Sanmar, Hexaware Technology, ESSAE, Tebotin, Virtusa, Flextronics and CSS CORP.
"Various training programs have been conducted in our institution to help the students meet the challenging corporate needs. Corporate training is given to the students by ICT Academy, CISCO Academy, Talentsprint, and CMC2. These ventures are of immense help to students to acquire advanced software knowledge that the market demands at present," says Dr.V.Ramasamy, Principal. As part of the Continuing Education Cell, the institute imparts training by coaching the students in AUTOCAD, ANSYS, Total Station, MS project, Primavera, ANDROID, Cloud infrastructure and services, LABVIEW, CCNA, PLC SCADA, CADENCE, BIGDATA, and many more. The College also provides the environment to foster the skills to achieve academic excellence along with the necessary training required for self-employment for the students through Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IEDC). Technical events are also arranged by 'Student Chapters' of various professional societies such as ISTE, IETE, ICI, IE, CSI, SAE, IICHe to facilitate the students' interaction with professionals. Besides, the students are involved in 'Club activities' such as Science club, Maths club, Literary club, Hobby club, and Sports club to exhibit their creativity and leadership skills.
Enhancing the Research
To enhance its prestige, to be competitive and to cater to the zeal of students for knowledge, the college has obtained approval from the Anna University to commence a Research Centre way back in 2010 to groom the scholars for PhD degrees. It has been functioning very vigorously by equipping the laboratories with advanced testing equipments commensurate with research programmes. So far, seven of the Research Departments have enrolled over 72 research scholars in different disciplines. Over the years, the research scholars have published hundreds of papers in journals of repute and presented in international conferences. To support these activities, the college has well qualified and devoted faculty members in all spheres. "Our faculties take keen interest in imparting education to students with the sole aim of moulding them into successful engineers to serve the Society in an ethical manner as well as to uplift the people from poverty as enshrined in the vision of the college," says Dr. V. Ramasamy.
Existence for a Social Benefit
Established in 1984 and located in Melmaruvathur, Tamil Nadu, the sprawling green campus of about 62 acres mainly surrounded by coconut farms and paddy fields is on Grand South Trunk (GST) Road connecting Chennai and Kanyakumari. "We setup the campus in a rural environment to give a helping hand to the children of downtrodden and hapless of the lower strata of Society; an opportunity of the engineering education as well as to raise their standard of living," says Dr. G.B. Senthil Kumar, Correspondent, Adhiparasakthi Engineering College. At present, the institute provides 7 undergraduate programs, 10 postgraduates programs, and 7 Research programs.
By empowering students to take on the industry with its comprehensive academic plan with the support of excellent faculty and well-equipped laboratories, it is evident that the institute is not making mere graduates, but the real engineers for tomorrow.
Dr. G.B. Senthil Kumar
He is the Correspondent of Adhiparasakthi Engineering College. He took over the reins of the college in the year 2000 and from then onwards introduced various measures to raise its standards to global levels with the result experts of different countries started evincing keen interest in the activities of the college.
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