Students are motivated to incubate their innovative concepts through our incubation centre, says Vice Chairperson

In a conversation with Shiksha.com, Vice Chairperson of Anand International College of Engineering Monika Mittal, talks in detail about the various initiatives taken by the institute to impart quality education. It includes an extensive focus on grooming of students as per industry standards, facilitating them free access to value-added courses and enhancing their leadership skills. The focus of the institute is to prepare students to achieve incremental growth in life. Mittal has attained expertise in making right financial decisions and effective management of organisational behaviour, key for success of an organisation.

Read the excerpts of the interview below:

Q: What are the things that your college is doing that will enable it to differentiate itself from competition?

A: Apart from just imparting quality education, we believe in facilitating the practical knowledge to students for everlasting impact. To make this happen, we focus on:

• Global exposure: Anand-ICE provides once in a lifetime opportunity to the graduating students to pursue their one-month summer internship from renowned foreign universities or industries of the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, China, Spain, Russia, Thailand, Central America and Turkey on scholarship. More than 100 Anandites have availed the Abroad Training Scholarship till date.
• Training & placements: At Anand-ICE, we don’t just educate, but also provide 200 per cent placement assistance to our students. We have achieved 100 per cent placements in the last three years with an average package of Rs 8 lakh per annum offered to students in 2020.
• World-class infrastructure & laboratories: The campus nurtures intellectually inspiring lush-green landscaping with state-of-the-art classrooms, seminar halls and laboratories equipped with contemporary equipment and teaching aids including various additional labs such as iOS laboratory, Stir-casting machine. The campus inspires the students to become champions in their professional life while building lifelong bonding.
• Incubation center: The Institute promotes students to incubate their innovative concepts and start-ups in State-of-The-Art Anand Incubation Centre at the campus, and with its extension at the heart of city, Bapu-Nagar for meeting all needs of the business including workspace, mentoring and wholesome supports.

Q: What are the top three initiatives undertaken by you that are helping your students become more industry ready?

A: Its important to have an updated curriculum so any institute can prepare students at part with the industry standards. To have a long term and ever-growing career in the industry, one has to keep themselves updated with the latest trends and practices followed. We imbibe such qualities in students by:

• Enabling our students to be corporate ready. Anand-ICE ensures maximum industry integration throughout their educational journey. Our team works in close connection with the industry and has established over 200 industrial tie-ups across the country to provide corporate exposure to the students in the form of student internship, regular industrial visits, hosting corporate talk shows and conducting webinars.
• Spending over 400 hours on Personality Grooming Program for our students with a dedicated team of best trainers inculcating in them all the required soft skills needed by the industry apart from the technical skills.
• Facilitating students’ access to Anand-edge which is an initiative by Anand-ICE. It is instrumented with many industry-led courses and specialised courses in engineering disciplines and sub-disciplines meeting expectations of employers and industries. This includes Active Spoken Tutorial center of IIT Mumbai, active NPTEL Center with seven Core IITs and IISc Bangalore, Nodal Center in the state of Rajasthan for Virtual Labs with IIT Mumbai, Center of Excellence with few industries in the campus, a Certified RED HAT Academy at the college for enterprise-ready talent by outfitting them with Red Hat Training and Certification. 

Q: What are the key attributes that a student should have in order to qualify for your institution and get top grades?

A: In addition to the basic academic qualifications, the aspirant who is keen at learning new things every day, carries a positive attitude and is focused about the career will be given preference.

To be a merit-holder, a student is expected to be consistent throughout the learning process, both in theory as well as practice. They must be passionate about the course they have chosen and carry self-belief.

Q: Which programme would you say is your best? What is it that helps your institution differentiate itself for this programme?

A: Anand-ICE offers BTech degree programme in four disciplines-Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering which are the evergreen branches and the graduates in the same are needed by every single industry. The extraordinary opportunities provided by us for the students make all these branches special.

To name the best, BTech programme in Computer Science & Engineering at Anand-ICE provides an edge to the students with a team of dedicated faculty carrying rich experience in academia and industry.

Further, apart from most modern configured labs with latest machines and newest versions of software for enhancing the practical skills, the department is unique to have a Macintosh Apple Laboratory for learning and development of iOS apps and tools for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and iMessage services. It’s the first in the state of Rajasthan and provides an edge over other global technologies.

Q: What are you doing to improve/drive better campus placements for your current students and alumni? What kind of jobs routinely come to campus? What would you say are the key recruitment trends for your college (observed over the past five years)?

A: We have a strong placement team that works round the year to establish close connections with the industries throughout the country for student placements. The team also rigorously trains the students to prepare for campus drives which include conducting of Mock Group Discussions, Personal Interviews and Company Orientation.

We offer good core as well as non-core job opportunities to our students with an average annual package being Rs 8 LPA. Some students also bag more than one job offer which gives them the option to choose the most suitable for them.

The recruitment graph of Anand-ICE has been constantly rising in terms of the quality of job opportunities and salaries bagged by the students. Despite the downfall in the market situations, we managed to remain a preferred choice of the corporates. Overall, the student experience has been good in previous years and currently it is beyond their expectations.