No longer a drab college
QMS, OR Quality Management System, is what has helped refurbish the image of the BVB College of Engineering and Technology (BVBCET), Hubli.
The BVBCET is the oldest of the engineering colleges in Northern Karnataka. It started initially as a polytechnic in 1947 in Gadag, thanks to the munificent donation by a philanthropist of the day, B.V. Bhumaraddi, and moved to Hubli as a full-fledged engineering college a year later. For the first two decades, it persisted with the three traditional engineering courses, namely, Civil, Mechanical and Electrical. It added Electronics and Communication in 1979, and then regularly went on to add newer courses, viz., Industrial Production and Architecture (1983), Computer Science (1985), Automobile Engineering (1986), Instrumentation Technology (1987), Information Science (1999) and Biotechnology (2002). The instructions in PG courses started with Structural Engineering in 1988 and then came Energy Systems and Production Management (1993), Digital Electronics (1995) and MCA (1999).
Despite the variety of courses added or offered, the college sported a drab appearance and the mood inside was hardly pulsating. But, today, things are refreshingly different. The college, with a new facade and string of new buildings, has turned out to a hub of vitality. Its vision of being "preferred choice of students seeking engineering education'' has almost become a reality, as is evident from the gradual improvement in the "Incoming Students Quality Index''.
The ultimate of the index calculated mathematically and technically based on certain parameters is 1. In the case of the BVBCET, it has moved up from 0.72 in 2001 to 0.77 in 2002 and 0.86 in 2003. For the current year, it has been tentatively computed at 0.93.
"This only shows the increasing number of meritorous students seeking admission to our college," says Ashok Shettar, the Principal, who has been managing the affairs of the college for the past four years. While the seats in Automobile and Industrial Production, the less glamourous of the engineering courses, were vacant in some of the other leading engineering colleges during the casual round, our seats in these disciplines had been filled.''
The change began to take shape three-and-a-half years ago, with Dr. Shettar (an M.E., Ph.D in Water Resources from the Indian Institute of Science- turned Management Studies buff), beginning to apply the principles of management for achieving excellence.
It started with redefining the vision of the college, under which the consensus was that it should emerge as the "preferred choice'' of the students and, besides imparting quality technical education, strive for success in preparing the students for life and leadership, provide a vibrant learning environment, contribute to advancement of knowledge in both fundamentals and applied areas and forge beneficial relationships with government entities, industry, society and alumni.
Around 40 members of faculty had strategic planning sessions spread over three separate sessions as to what goals could be achieved. They worked on what was there at present, where would they aim to seek and how the gap could be filled. Thrust areas such as students' success, human resources development, support systems, research and management and administration were identified and all this resulted in the BVBCET QMS (Quality Management System) being evolved and taken up for implementation.
Four key areas
The QMS envisaged four key process areas: 1) Education Delivery — covering the activities involved in teaching and learning; 2) Students' Services — covering the areas of augmenting teaching and learning process; 3) Support Services — supporting the daily operation of an educational institution and 4) Quality Management.
Accordingly, the hierarchial system with the Principal as the fulcrum of all activities gave way to a system having both horizontal and vertical linkage under which responsibilities were given to each of the departments, their heads and the individual teachers and a system of assessing and evaluating the performance was put in place.
As a part of the academic delivery system, course planning, course delivery and action for improvement and measurement of effectiveness were introduced under which the teachers would prepare the lesson plans for distribution among the students in advance. Emphasis was laid on counselling, tutorials and coaching and a system of constant monitoring of the performance of the students and teachers was put in place.
More importantly, student feedback was introduced, with constant analysis of the data provided for review of the programme. This resulted in gradual improvement in the performance of the students in the examinations, according to Dr. Shettar.
Another value addition was the "Vikas Programme'' designed to train students in soft skills, which included developing a positive attitude and self-esteem, goal setting, time management, communication skills, interpersonal relations, leadership, facing interviews, group discussions and entrepreneurship.
All these are packaged in five modules spread over from IV to VIII semester, involving 96 to 120 hours of extra teaching. The VIII semester is when the students begin facing campus interviews and the programme is being advanced to cover the earlier semesters too, with the campus interviews slated to commence from the sixth semester. Programmes in specialised areas which are relevant to the industry requirements but which are not part of the curriculum, including CCNA, VLSI designs, GIS and Mechanotrics, have been provided for.
The human resources development programme has resulted in the student teacher ratio standing at 1:13.37 as against 1:15 prescribed by the AICTE. The percentage of teachers with Ph.D qualification has gone up from six to 12, and those with M.E. from 52 per cent to 66 per cent while the percentage of teachers with B.E qualification has come down from 42 to 27. Based on the feedback given by the students, an in-house training programme for the teachers has been arranged in pedagogy, counseling skills and mentoring skills.
One of the problems faced by the students from the college, as far as placement is concerned, is the locational disadvantage of Hubli being located away from the industrial hub and companies not finding a large number of students at one place.
The college has been aggressively pursuing the matter, networking with the other engineering colleges in the region to ensure that a large number of students are available at one place. The BVBCET is into online registering of the students from other colleges for the purpose of placement interviews. Thirteen top companies including Infosys and TCS visited the campus for placement interviews during the last academic year.
The BVBCET, which has a good automated library, has also provided intranet facilities for the faculty and the students. This has enabled the teachers, the heads of the departments and the Principal to keep tabs on the progress of the students and take corrective action wherever necessary.
This facility is likely to be put on the net to enable the parents to watch the progress of the wards. The student satisfaction index to discern the reaction of the students to facilities given and steps provided puts the index at 77.5 and this is being improved every year.
``Our next challenge is to get over the problem of interaction with the industry, because of the paucity of industries in the region, and developing excellence in the realm of postgraduate education and research'' says Dr Shettar.
"We have been able to make this progress mainly because of the wholehearted support from the management headed by the Chairman, Prabhakar Kore,'' he added.
M. MADAN MOHAN
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