Dearth of quality faculty posing challenge for India's engineering colleges: Massachusetts Varsity academic

India still faces an acute shortage of quality faculty members, whose need is felt in the country's roughly 3,000 engineering colleges.

This was stated by Professor Krishna Vedula, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Dean Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Lowell at an Amity University-organised event here.

He said, There is need for over 1 50, 000 quality faculty members for India's 3, 000 plus engineering colleges.

Highlighting measures to revive engineering education in India, Professor Vedula said teaching is important, but learning is more important.

"The emphasis, in classrooms, should be on active learning which could be practiced by a basic concept of 'Think, Pair and Share'. The faculty members should encourage students to think creatively, pair with their friends and share their learning with them." added Prof. Vedula.

He further added that the Engineering students should be like Magicians who could create something out of nothing and they should be able to address the challenges faced by the world including water, security and infrastructure.

He averred that in a university, faculty members are entrusted with three main responsibilities- "Knowledge Creation", "Knowledge Application" and "Knowledge Transfer to the students".

He rued that universities tend to give more impetus to Knowledge Creation and opined that equal importance should be given to "Knowledge Application" and "Knowledge Transfer" which are equally challenging and intellectually stimulating.

He called upon the faculty members to think and devise new ways to deliver content every year to make the content more interesting and easier to relate to. He suggested the faculty members at Amity to try and practice the concept of "Flip Classroom" which is a form of blended learning in which students learn new content online by watching video lectures, usually at home, and the homework (assigned problems) is done in classroom with teachers offering more personalized guidance, instead of lecturing.

Vedula, who is a Co- Founder and Executive Director of "The Indo US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE), also appraised the gathering with the various initiatives taken by "IUCEE" to bridge the gap between Engineering Education in U.S and India.

Prof. (Dr.) Ravi Prakash- Director, Amity School of Engineering and Technology laid stress on the need for students to stay abreast with the global education trends in Engineering so that they become globally employable. He expressed his hope that Amity and IUCEE would have a fruitful association in future.

Sharing her views, Dr. (Mrs.) Balvinder Shukla- Vice Chancellor, Amity University said that education has become global and Amity University has been pacing fast towards the goal of achieving global excellence in Engineering education. She shared that various efforts are being made at Amity to comply with all rules, regulations and standards outlined by relevant statutory National and International bodies including ABET, IET, NAAC, Washington Accord, ACB etc. Highlighting the numerous initiatives taken by Amity University to promote active learning based education amongst students, she outlined that Amity has already implemented new system of Outcome Based Education, Flexi Time Tables, Choice Based Credit System etc.