Things change with the passage of time and the best of us is the one who adapts them, says Principal

In a conversation with Shiksha.com, United Group of Institutions - UGI Allahabad Principal Dr Sanjay Srivastava discusses the institute's curriculum and placements. He goes on to describe how the institute dealt with the challenging circumstance of Covid 19. The institute went to great lengths to guarantee that students could learn effectively from the comfort of their own homes.

Dr Srivastava is an MSc, and PhD degree holder from MNNIT, Allahabad in Physics with over 25 years of rich academic experience.

Read the complete interview below:

Q: What do you think how effective is online teaching, keeping the pandemic situation in mind and how these changes are going to help the students?

A: Things change with the passage of time and the best of us is the one who adapts them. During the pandemic situation, we have been teaching online through various platforms ensuring hassle-free teaching and interactive learning. Quality lectures were delivered by the faculty, and the study materials of every topic were provided in the digital mode so that the students can go through them whenever they want.

There is a famous quote that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Apart from studies, online teaching helped students expose new methods of learning and interacting with the people that make them familiar with the virtual campus drives and interviews.

Q: Tell us why UGI is a good college to be grown with. Please elaborate on some of the career opportunities.

A: An educational Institute especially an Engineering institute is known mainly for its placements, infrastructure and quality of education. UGI has well-qualified and experienced faculty members along with a dedicated training team that provides aptitude as well as technical training to the students so that they can ensure their placements in various reputed MNCs. We have a tagline ‘Think Placements, Think United’. Good numbers of companies visit our campus every year. Many students get more than one offer letter by big names like TCS, Infosys, Accenture, Wipro, Cognizant, Capgemini, Byju's etc. Apart from this the infra is one the bests in terms of 100% AC classrooms, a magnificent sports complex, gym, student activity center and a dedicated massive library adds a feather in its cap.

Q: What is the impact of Covid-19 on placements, did it affect the number of job offers?

A: Well, at first it seemed that the circumstances are going to hit it badly but we left no stone unturned to manage it. Credit goes to the training and placement team for their well-executed planning and hard work even in the worst conditions and to our expectations the end results were awesome, not to talk about the decline,  we recorded a remarkable hike in the number of job offers. Even in the pandemic, we reckoned approximately over 1200 mark including highest packages by Amazon and Intel.

Q: What steps have been taken by the college to keep the pandemic at bay?

A: We know that every guardian is very much concerned about the safety of their wards. Hence students' safety is our priority. There are some strict guidelines for students as well as for the whole staff. Wearing masks in the campus is mandatory for all, washbasins and sanitisers are installed at the entry gates and prominent places, thermal scanning is done before each entry, we ensure proper social distancing among the students, close gathering is strictly restricted. We have bifurcated the batches into smaller ones ensuring enough room among the students. Moreover, we make sure that every faculty and staff member is vaccinated and we promote every student to get vaccinated as soon as possible, to make our campus Covid free.

Q: What else is the college doing beyond the routine/ conventional academics for the betterment of the students?

A: Apart from routine academics, we focus on the skills that are required to land a job easily. Students can opt for either GATE or  Campus Recruitment Training. We work on the overall personality of the students through various programs like personality development and mock interview sessions. We plan some special classes called ‘Boot Camp’ to hasten the preparations of the students for their campus drives. PSD classes are provided to improve their programming and coding skills. We also promote extracurricular skills among the students.