Prof. Sandeep Sancheti, Provost, (Vice-Chancellor), Marwadi University, Rajkot speaks about the implementation of NEP 2020

“Very recently we have decided on one student one skill kind of an initiative so which is equally important that every year they get some skill and they are more industry ready,” says Prof. Sandeep Sancheti, Provost, (Vice-Chancellor), Marwadi University, Rajkot in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad

As we witnessed to listen to you in the first panels which talked about the National Education Policy, any initiatives which under your leadership the university has already taken or in plans to take to actually Implement that?

Yeah, so NEP is a very important direction for all of us, very open also so I’m sure most of the institutions have done something or else in this direction. So, is the case with the Marwadi University that we have done many of them for example we are now offering programs under ABC Academic Bank of Credit and to offer that we have created committees which will be doing the credit equivalences, credit transfers and other things which will take care of all related activities. We also made sure that we offer three year and four-year programs which are again the order of the NEP in the sense that it should be flexible. So, recently coined programs on BSc have been done three and four years particularly we have converted some of the honours program into four years our student can make an exit after three years and will get non-honours program. We have also rephrased the programs in such a manner that after first year one can make an exit and, in that case, they will have to do a small module which will be of skilling so with that skilling they can also get certification or maybe diploma and things like that so these are all in line. With that very recently we have decided on one student one skill kind of an initiative so which is equally important that every year they get some skill and they are more industry ready and there’s a whole lot of things which we are trying to do when we talk of multi-disciplinary. When we talk of research, when we talk of internationalization Marwadi University anyway is ahead though it’s very young but it’s doing very very well.

So, the buzzword of now a times in many of the forums is about the newest technologies so if I ask about the ICT or the edtech implementation in your university?

Edtech implementation is most essential for everyone including my university, fortunately we are young so more adoptable more dynamic and we also owe our origin to a finance company called Marwadi shares and finance limited which was purely electronic since inception so we know that in our roots all these things are there. So, as an example we have a system called URP, University Resource Planning which is end to end from admission to alumni everything is taken care nothing is done on paper including every examination result or maybe copy showing or any approval any, event anything is done online only so we have made many IT based or IT support systems to make sure that students in our activities are supported. As an example, if I have to issue a book I have to carry the book go in front of the system it will recognize me with face recognition I have to put the book which I want to get issued, book will be issued to me there is no human interaction or intervention in the process so that much of automation we have done when it comes to teaching learning. Obviously, we are doing things from MOOC so we are partners of Coursera we are doing everything possibly online through a lot of blended mode teaching learning. So, we have trained hundred percent of teachers for that and we also made compulsory in certain cases in engineering and other disciplines that some of the labs and courses will be virtual mode done virtually and some of the courses will be delivered in an online mode so that the students become familiar with that. So, all that whatever can be done to make them more IT savvy and more IT ready in terms of use as well as delivery has been done.

So, one very typical and a very old question I will ask is alumni meet important and why?

Alumni meet would always be important for the simple reason that alumni are always a growing base every year in that base number of alumni will get added it may be thousands or two thousand or whatever it may be whereas rest of the numbers will grow slowly. So, in a given institution if the strength is five thousand, ten thousand the alumnus may be twenty thousand, thirty thousand and if you are not able to connect with your own people in a right manner then obviously you are not going to grow you are not taking care of them. Alumni is important also because they also give a lot of feedback they also give lot of inputs, they also give you a lot of teaching learning support they also give you a lot of connect with the industry and so on so forth so that you get the projects and all that so that’s the second reason alumni are important. The third thing I would say is alumni themselves continue to remain a student for future today’s education goes for matured students also so every alumni who has graduated from Marwadi will have to learn something new and why shouldn’t we help our own alumni. So, our alumni connect is important we do it in a very formal way in a certain way we award them, reward them we call them and so on so forth but there is no limit what more can be done. Fortunately for us in all formal bodies whether board of studies, faculty boards, academic council or maybe our board in IQ AC etc we are always involved our alumni in a certain way and we want to grow with them that’s our endeavour.

I’m very glad and happy to share that we recently celebrated our first anniversary and it was a very excitement full of thrill, learning and experience any message would you like to give for ArdorComm Media Group?

I think education space needs a lot of good inputs and a lot of good support systems which ArdorComm is providing. I congratulate you on your first anniversary and lot of good work, your today’s presence here presence of the academic leaders and various themes which are getting discussed and attended are an example of your good work. I wish you good luck in this endeavour where you are supporting us and we will support you thank you and best wishes.