India's Aeronautical Engineering sector is undoubtedly a specialized field that has seen a lot of growth and development in the last few years. The Indian Civil Aviation MRO market, at present, stands at around $900 million and is anticipated to grow to $4.33 billion by 2025, increasing at a CAGR of about 14-15 percent. With the increasing number of airports, private players in the airline industry, and the introduction of business ventures like Aeropark in Chennai contributing to this growth, the industry is bound to have a positive growth scope. To add to this, the Indian drone industry will have a total turnover of up to $1.8 billion by 2026 and one of the major reasons for this is the introduction of Drones to the commercial market. Also, Urban Air Mobility, in simple terms, Air Taxis is getting recognized.There is no denying that the Aeronautical sector is poised for tremendous growth in India.
Established in 1994 by SNR Sons Charitable Trust, Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College (SREC), Coimbatore is one of the very few institutions, that developed the infrastructure - redesigning the course syllabi and curricula in alignment with the growing technological needs and demands of the industry. One of the 15 institutes managed by the trust, SREC has been an autonomous institute since 2007, with an A+ grade through two cycles of NAAC. Also, for the last four years, the institution has been ranked amongst the top 200 institutions in the NIRF, with all departments permanently affiliated to Anna University, Chennai, and all eligible programs accredited by NBA.
Courses for Industry-Ready Aeronautical Engineers
SREC initiated four Undergraduate (UG) programmes with an annual intake of 180 in 1994 and currently it has eleven UG programmes and seven Postgraduate (PG) programmes in Engineering and Technology; the institution also provides a five-year integrated MTech in Computer Science & Engineering and MBA programmes. Contributing to Aeronautical Engineering, SREC has a unique Drone Pilot Training program for the masses in collaboration with LYNX-Lawrence and Mayo, to train DGCA-certified drone pilots on the campus. Through the Centre for Excellence in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), students are given opportunities to build drones for societal and commercial applications through the DGCA-approved training facility. The Department of Aeronautical Engineering has signed an MoU with Capgemini for technical publications, and Airworks for Maintenance and structural health monitoring.
"We are planning to engage with more industries to take on the new age of structural health monitoring, lightweight materials, swarm drones, and much more. Design thinking is given ample importance through industry lead courses for all students on campus. Students are also prepared for research & development, enabling them to apply formaster's and Ph.D. programs in eminent institutions like IISc and IITs. The students are regularly selected for the AICTE-MITACS research fellowship, where they are given an opportunity to take up fully funded research at leading institutions in Canada", says Dr. N. R. Alamelu.
Being an autonomous institution, SREC continuously updates its curricula and syllabi for all the programmes and courses with the latest tech and innovations, which are vetted by industry professionals and senior academicians from premier institutes in India and abroad, for our students to have an edge over others. CBCS with the learner-centric outcome is being followed for all the programmes.
The uniqueness of the programmes in SREC is its multi-disciplinary learning approach with the introduction of specializations and minors.
"The students can earn 20 additional credits with joint industry certifications both for specializations and minors. The specializations offered include Robotics & Automation, 3D printing for Mechanical Engineering, IoT & Sensor Technologies for Communication & Instrumentation Engineering, Electric Vehicles for Electrical Engineering, Green Technology for Civil Engineering, Cybersecurity and AR/VR for Computer Science and Information Technology and the minors include Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Machine Learning. The Department of Aeronautical Engineering offers unique courses on Structural Health Monitoring, Urban Air Mobility, and Electric Aviation. Future courses to look forward to are the introduction and AI and Data Science into the field of Aviation", briefs Dr. N. R. Alamelu.
"SREC is setting itself apart by promoting value-based education through several programs that run across the departments with the collaboration of the industries"
Equipped with the Best Offerings
SREC is spread across 42.24 acres with a built-up area of 1.5 lakh sq. ft. is an ideal amalgam of tradition and innovation. From Gbps Wi-Fi connectivity to a full stacked library with 1 Lakh volume of books support continuous 24/7 learning, state-of-the-art laboratories, AICTE funded Idea Lab - Centers of Excellence - Industry Sponsored Laboratories - MHRD Recognized innovation Centre that provides the right ambiance and ecosystem to nurture, creativity, innovation and out of the box thinking leading to multi-disciplinary learning. The Innovation Centre and the incubation facilities at SREC are state-of-the-art modern-day facilities motivating the students to be part of all hackathons, and innovative competitions. The in-house medical center, hostels, best athletic ground, gymnasium, and other sports facilities help for a healthy and cheerful learning atmosphere.
"SREC has excellent infrastructure for sports and games, with one of the best athletic grounds in the country. Students regularly take part in zonal, interzonal, university, inter-university, international and open tournaments, and all such participations are fully sponsored by the management. Students also participate in Coding competitions every year, such as AICTE Hackathons, Industry Open Innovation contests, and competitions organized in institutions of eminence, where the POC and development of the solutions are funded by the management", says Dr. N. R. Alamelu.
To add further, SREC also provides state government scholarships to eligible students, a few of them include Adi-Dravidar and Tribal Welfare, Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare, National Merit, First Generation Graduate, and AICTE-Pragati Scholarship for Girls. Apart from this, the management provides scholarships for the state and national level sports persons, scholarships to the siblings of alumni, and wards of the working faculty members. The alumni association provides scholarships through endowments and seed funds.
SREC is setting itself apart by promoting value-based education through several programs that run across the departments with the collaboration of the industries. Industry-sponsored laboratories and Centers of Excellences are distinctions of the institution which enable students to partake in the industry-offered one-credit courses and projects that help bridge the industry-academia gap. MoUs have been signed with specific industries like Capgemini, GE, LTTS, and BootLabs, to name a few, for Industry joint specializations and minors. The institution has established a section 8 registered company, `SREC - SPARK' Foundation for Business Incubation. SREC is also facilitated by the Institution Industry Council and AICTE-IDEA (Idea Development, Evaluation & Application) Lab. Around 175+ leading organizations such as Amazon, Benz, Mahindra, L&T Technology Services, IBM, Capgemini, WIPRO, PARI, Altran, CTS, INFOSYS, L&T Info Tech, Ducen IT, IDBI Federal, Aspire Systems, Odessa Technologies, Zoho, Soliton Technologies, Conding Mart, Heptagon, Virtusa, BYJU'S, TCS, LMW, and others have made 1000+ job offers and 600+ internship offers, with a median salary of 4.4 LPA and the highest salary of 24 LPA.
Towards a Promising Tomorrow
SREC's vision is to be the best industry-linked institution in the country, aligning with the changes in the technical requirements, where faculty members are trained in advance on the various current technologies, enabling them to disseminate the same to the students. SREC has always been focusing on the holistic learning of its students to be technically sound through multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary learning approaches, which makes them readily employable.
"To keep the students and staff abreast of developments in the scientific arena and emerging engineering trends, around 200+ workshops, seminars, and conferences on the topics of Industrial Automation, Electric vehicles, Design thinking, Android and iOS apps, 3D printing, Business communication, Data Science for Biomedical engineers, Quality systems, Data Analytics/AI/ML, VR & AR simulation, Autonomous mobile robots, social responsibilities are organized, which enables the faculty and students to exhibit their leadership skills, managerial skills, and creativity, in addition to technological updates. SREC-COIN conducted Open courses for all students on the topics of aeromodelling, AI for engineers, Innovation, creativity, and Design Thinking, to name a few. Open Online courses for students are also conducted regularly by all the departments to promote multi-disciplinary learning", speaks Dr. Alamelu.
SREC has the vision to develop into a leading world-class Technological University of Schools of Excellence in various disciplines with a co-existent Centre for Engineering Solutions Development for a worldwide clientele and the college continuously strives to achieve this vision through itsunique mission: "To provide all necessary inputs to the students for them to grow into knowledge engineers and scientists, Excellence in domain knowledge - practice and theory; Excellence in co-curricular and Extracurricular talents, and Excellence in character and personality".
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