Engineers are an integral part of a country's overall development. India is creating more than one million engineers with a mixture of technical cleverness each year. But one is bound to wonder, how many of these engineers meet the industry requirements? The figures will give some shocking surprises. If we start digging deep to find out the culprit then we can spot that, it is nothing but our curriculum and the way of teaching. S.A. Engineering College located in Chennai has constructed a unique way in providing quality education and has written many success stories since the last 16 years. "We have to teach our students beyond the syllabus and provide them with more value added courses. Only covering up the syllabus and making students write the exam and getting out of college will definitely not help them match the industry needs," says Venkatesh Raja, Director, S.A. Engineering College.
The 1998-89 established college now has six UG programs in ECE, CSE, CIVIL, MECH, EEE and IT, with a total intake of 720 students. Six PG programs in which MCA with 60 students and MBA with 120 students and four M.E programs in Engineering with an intake of 18 students each and approved by AICTE and affiliated to Anna University with total annual intake of 972 students.
Creating an Infrastructure to Think out of the Box
In the years of journey in education service, the college has constructed all the basic infrastructural facilities for technical education. The fully Air-Conditioned Central Library & PG Department libraries of SAEC are to be proud of for the diversified collection of reading and referral materials. They are well equipped with modern methods of documentation. Apart from IEEE journals, they prescribe precise journals for each branch.
SAEC has three research and development centers inside the campus for ME, EEE and ECE to provide high quality human resource in disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas. The Centre will offer specialized Master's degree courses, unique Ph.D. programs, domain specific training programs, high quality research and development in the specific areas. They have already done more than 25 approved funded projects from government and various NIITs in their R&D center with a collaborative effort from students, faculties and management. The management is planning to construct two more R&D centers in the upcoming year.
Molding the Students to Meet the Industry Requirements
The experience and knowledge of the faculty plays a vital role in engineering studies. The SAEC management follows strict guidelines while recruiting the staff members to make sure that their students get the apt mentors. As a result, the college has bagged 23 university rank holders that has always been a big number for other numerous colleges under Anna University. Branching out from studies SAEC has a unique cell called Entrepreneur Development Cell (EDC) that provide guidance to the students to start their own business after the completion of their course. EDC conduct lectures and workshops with participation of top management people from government as well as reputed companies.
With enormous experience in the field of education, the college is always aware about the limitations of the curriculum and they provide a bunch of value added course to their students to make them meet the requirements of the industry. Teaching CAD and CAM for Civil and Mechanical students, tied up with IBM to give training in software foundation for CSE, IT and MCA students, moving with Carnegie Mellon University, USA to train the students in advanced robotics and embedded excellence are some of the examples for
value added syllabus from SAEC.
The academic excellence at SAEC has reflected in its student's exemplary record in placements in the corporate and engineering sectors. The College has consistently maintained an excellent recruitment record. Some of the world's leading corporates, besides leading Indian companies, have recruited more than 80 percent students from SAEC last year. TCS, IBM, CTS, Wipro, HM Motors, Nissan, MRF, Mahindra Sathyam, L&T and Honeywell are some of the biggies among the 48 companies that visited the college last year. However, the placement policies at SAEC restrict students to join huge numbers in a single company. "I do not want two or three companies to come and grab all my students. I want my students to spread all over the industry and all over the country," says Venkatesh.
Students as the Prime Concern
SAEC consider their students as primary entities and gives more importance to the student centric activities. They conduct international conference, NSS programs, National sports tournaments and several other programs under the leadership of various activity centers. With the wide range of facilities apt for a technical education, SAEC is following a highly transparent admission procedure. The management firmly follows government rules to admit the students from all over the country. The Director, SAEC assures that they compete only in action and not in fee. The country and our young student population will benefit a lot with competent institutes like SAEC.
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