IIT Gandhinagar sees 55% increase in placement offers, says Director

Q. Several IITs have announced a good start to the placement season with many witnessing record pre-placement offers (PPOs). What is the placement status at IIT Gandhinagar? 

A. We saw a 60 per cent jump in PPOs this year compared to last year. The acceptance rate has increased by 30 per cent as well. IIT Gandhinagar follows a rolling placement season which will run through July 2022. Compared to last year at this time, we have seen an increase of 55 per cent in number of students placed.

Q. IIT Gandhinagar secured the 33rd rank in the overall category and 22nd rank in the engineering category in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2021. Which factors led to the achievement?

A. IITGN has always focused on quality education and meaningful and impactful research. The institute’s consistent progress over the years is testament of its excellence in academics, research and innovation. We aspire to develop well-rounded students who have societal understanding and awareness and can provide leadership for the future. The institute has a heavy focus on interdisciplinarity, learning by doing, design thinking, liberal arts, and creativity, all of which are at the core of its academicprogrammes. We are constantly striving to explore, innovate, and scale newer heights in education and research & development. We aim to be our own competition for global educational excellence.

Q. Industry interaction is being stressed by the AICTE and companies that recruit. What are the steps being taken by the institute in this direction?

A. Multiple stakeholders, including students at IIT Gandhinagar, are actively involved in strengthening industry collaborations with the institute. To take one example, a student group, called the Industry Relations and Project Council, has attracted several industrial projects that students have benefitted from. Amalthea, the annual tech-fest of IIT Gandhinagar, featuring high-profile industry leaders in its conclave, symposiums, and tech-expo, is entirely managed by our students.

We also have an active Research Park with several premiere corporate clients, such as NASSCOM, WIN Foundation, E-Infochips, etc. We have several schemes, such as professor of practice and industry associates that bring industry professionals to our campus. 

Q. What is the proportion of male to female enrolment at IIT Gandhinagar? What steps have you taken to increase the enrolment of girl students at the institute?

A. The proportion of female students in the incoming BTech batch is 21 per cent. At the graduate level, 38 per cent of the students are female. IITGN provides tremendous opportunities to all its students by offering a collegial, healthy and safe environment, an excellent academic structure and research culture. Besides, we offer several scholarships targeted at female students.

Q. Any new courses you are planning to introduce in the coming future?

A. A major recent innovation at IITGN has been around online education, which has expanded beyond the institute walls. IITGN has approved 180 MOOC courses for regular credit, vastly expanding course choices for our students. Nearly one-third of UG students and 18 per cent of master’s students received credits for MOOC courses during the summer of 2020. The institute also now offers remote learning by faculty from all over the world.

A total of 22 courses were offered during the past year by faculty from Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States. IITGN students were exposed by global faculty colleagues to courses ranging from citizenship and human rights, engineering of theatre making, ultrafast optics, abnormal psychology, and computational approaches to animal intelligence, to nanostructured thin films, quantum technologies, etc., widely expanding the diversity of their learning experience. 

Q. Many colleges have decided to conduct the new academic session in hybrid mode. How are you planning to approach the upcoming academic session?

A. With more than 95 per cent on-campus students and over 96 per cent of faculty members and regular non-teaching staff already double-vaccinated for COVID-19 (as on November 15, 2021), IIT Gandhinagar is planning to conduct classes for 2021-22 semester-II in offline mode. A majority of students are already back on campus and the remaining students are returning in a phased manner.

Q. Are you taking any steps to train your faculty in emerging technologies?

A. IIT Gandhinagar has more than 140 faculty members and all of them have distinctive expertise in their individual domains or areas of interest. The institute provides exceptional support, freedom and opportunities to its faculty members for professional development. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the institute developed several educational platforms and offered training to faculty, who are all now very well versed in educational technology tools for hybrid and online learning.