-By ArdorComm News Network
November 16, 2022
“We keep fine tuning our curriculum and we keep changing our pedagogies and we ensure that students get a lot of opportunities to get the best exposure possible with the legal profession,” says Dr. S. Shanthakumar, Director, Gujarat National Law University in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad
Would you like to highlight and give some light on both of the universities and the field which you represent?
See, the National Law University is not something new, we are 18 years old and we have been doing pretty good and amongst all the national law universities we have, we are number five in the country and I think we are doing a good job and our alumni who are placed at every place so they speak volumes about the quality of teaching learning that happens at the National Law University. With respect to Gujarat Maritime University yes this is something unique this is the vision of our honourable prime minister that India being a peninsula with such a long coastline we should take advantage of the geographical characteristics of the country and his Sagarmala project and the vision 2030 with all these things we thought that we need to create a trained manpower for the maritime sector so that is why this Gujarat Maritime University was set up and this is just three years old and we are doing a good job. Currently we have a master’s program in maritime law as well as we offer management programs in port management and the shipping Logistics.
How are we reimagining education especially in the sector of law so that the employability outcomes and upskilling happens?
Yes, see being a National Law University we are really fortunate to get the best students of the country and that really helps us as teachers to give them what they actually deserve and we also constantly innovate and look into the future and find out what can make our students very competent who will be always in need by the recruiters globally. Therefore, we keep fine tuning our curriculum and we keep changing our pedagogies and we ensure that students get a lot of opportunities to get the best exposure possible with the legal profession. Apart from that lot of skilling opportunities that we provide to them especially the moot courts through which students learn advocacy, research and writing the written submissions. So, these things really help our students in becoming the best in the legal profession.
As you know that the name of the event is New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards what does the word new normal stands for you?
New Normal is like you know previously we were not so open to an online session but currently the acceptance level is almost 100 percent. Previously when we had a few lectures through Skype students were not quite interested and even our faculty members were not so keen in organizing some lectures through Skype that I’m talking about time before zoom and WebEx but now the situation is that now we feel connected globally because of technology so we find a lot of opportunities to get to the best resource persons from all the countries, getting into our classrooms through the use of this technology so this is something which is forced by covid on us and I think we have responded very well and we are taking advantage of this Blended learning which is currently the new normal.
What is the outcome or what do we learn and experience from forums like this where the government representatives, private sectors players and the corporate are also there?
This is a wonderful platform for all of us to interact because otherwise in a busy day, any day is a busy day for academic administrators so handling universities, handling campuses, handling students, parents and all these stakeholders. So, this is a new normal for us to come together and sit together and over a cup of coffee discuss the challenges which we all face collectively and therefore we can arrive at some common solutions like we can innovate some new solutions to face all these challenges not only by the challenges posed by covid but also by all the technological advancements that’s happening in the field of education what they call as edtech. So, with all these things I think this is a wonderful opportunity and this should be more frequent.
I’m happy to share that we recently celebrated our one-year anniversary, so after one and a half year we feel really proud, any message would you like to give for ArdorComm Media Group?
Yeah, so congratulations ArdorComm Media for completing one year and I wish you all the best and I wish that ArdorComm Media continues this venture and keeps creating this kind of opportunities for all of us and I feel that you should approach more and more universities and do this program inside the universities so that much more participation can be there. I think that will be a suggestion that I would want to give.