Dr. L. Koteswara Rao has demonstrated his experience in teaching, research and administration during 20+ years of journey through academics. He is an Entrepreneur, Leader and Mentor, currently holding the position of Principal at KL Hyderabad Bachupally campus. He has acquired Ph.D. in Electronics and Communications Engineering From Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad and Masters in M.E, Electronics and communication engineering from Andhra University.

KL Hyderabad, Bachupally campus

You have held key positions at various prestigious institutions throughout your career. What is that one thing that made you excited and walk with KLH on the journey?

First and foremost, KLU is a reputed university in India, having its presence for the last 40 years. Second aspect is the support that they provide for the faculty growth in terms of research and administration is another thing that attracted me. Third one is the job satisfaction that you get when you teach with a university, which, following industry standards and Global standards, gives you more job satisfaction. These are the three important reasons why I came along with KLU.

How do you balance the needs of faculty, students, and administration as a Principal of an Engineering college?

I worked as a principal for the campus for two and a half years, and I have seen the requirements of students, expectations of students, also faculty members. And there was a tough time during the COVID. Overcoming the challenges during COVID time in terms of learning, and teaching were different challenges. We overcome those challenges with our commitment, also with the best practices we have. And we are training our faculty members to teach the students with more recent technologies. We always have a model where some new technology is coming into the market. That technology first will provide that to the faculty members. Then the faculty members will be taking that training for a long time and they teach to the students. So that is how the industry technologies are percolating down to the students via faculty members.
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As a Principal of an engineering college, what is the USP or what are the differentiating factors that make KLH stand out from other colleges?

When it comes to the student's perspective, the student is given full freedom to choose what they want to pursue. If a student wants to pursue engineering with arts included or engineering with something other discipline , or an electronic graduate willing to study data science. These kinds of flexibilities make us more different from outside. And second thing is our faculty who have been taken from the top most organizations in the country. The faculty are highly rich in research, are having a lot of experience in teaching, which is really unique from outside When you take research collaborations.And KLU is known for its discipline, which is more important these days, having its presence for last 42 years, which is one of the USPs of our university. Apart from that, even the sports, we have a model where we support students from sports backgrounds. When the student is an international player, we offer full flexibility and we make them more comfortable by arranging their examination schedules accordingly. Even if they go and participate in some international events, we consider that as a special case and give them the scope for writing the examinations to complete their degree. We call it a 360 degree curriculum. The student may be interested to play volleyball or any other sport, or student may be interested in starting a startup, helping them to start towards the new ideas and providing them some incubating space.

How do you stay current with the latest trends and developments in the field of Engineering and incorporate them into the curriculum and programs offered by KLH?

If you take a national perspective, there are so many places, there are so many colleges which are offering engineering programs, but very few or I can say are only providing the opportunity for students to learn or to experiment on the new technologies. When you take the first USP, it is the Industry Ready Curriculum. Unlike other colleges, we update our curriculum from time to time. Every six months, we have that process of reviewing our curriculum, adding some new things, or even removing something which is not relatable to current trends. Suppose if it is outdated, we change our curriculum as per the industry requirements from time to time by taking the support or help from industry experts, industry vice president, HR managers. We take the inputs from them and change the curriculum.

How exactly are you pushing students into entrepreneurship other than only focusing on placement?

It’s not mandatory that a student should think about entrepreneurship during the fourth year only . The student can think of taking entrepreneurship as a career in the first year itself. So you never know, today the idea may sound silly, but tomorrow it can turn out to be a good idea. We identify the students who are interested in entrepreneurship. We group those students in the entrepreneurship club, and take them to some t-hub or facilitate with any nearby incubation center. And we go to any extreme of helping the students to start their ideas from first year onwards. By the time they go to third year, they get a lot of awareness about who the investor is, how to move forward, how to patent it, how to prototype it. They’ll get exposed to a lot of stages. Business programs are always a part of our engineering program. Where the project with one student from BBA, one student from engineering are taken together and they start some business ideas. And engineering students develop coding and business students help in the business side of the idea and how to get that delivered to the industry.

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How well is KLH focusing on maintaining industry relationships with companies in order to leverage them for live projects, training, and placements for the students?

KLH has had its presence for 42 years, and we have a lot of alumni base. This alumni base is helping us to get ourselves connected to any company. When you take a company or any industry we'll have one student or a graduate or relative of KL University. We have a good pool of companies in Hyderabad where we can easily tap the company's potential or company's higher management team. We can invite them to the university and talk to our students and raise awareness about what is happening in the industry. And it's always easy for us to get connected to many industries being in a location like Hyderabad and from day one, this campus has started signing MOUs with top players. Unlike other colleges, Though it's a new campus, practices remain the same because this university has its own practices for a long time. 

What measures would you take to ensure that KLH provides a conducive learning environment with state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure?

If there is any new technology growing in the industry, We first study it immediately and then get it to try to train our faculty. We establish centers of excellence, suppose there is an Amazon i.e Cloud computing domain. We have the Amazon Web Service Academy, through which we train our students in cloud foundations. There is Cisco Academy, through Cisco we provide Cisco certified programs. We ask our students to do Google Certifications, TensorFlow, Microsoft Azure and many Fundamental courses. If there is any industry required training certification we provide through our university by collaborating with the company directly. Through centers of excellence, The student can get closer to the technology. In that way the certificate also will have more value. In addition to your B.Tech degree you will have a lot of additional value. When you say that I am a Google certified, I am a Microsoft certified.
Check: KL University Hyderabad Admission 2023: UG, PG, Ph.D., Dates, Application Process, Entrance Exam

What are the biggest challenges currently facing engineering colleges, and how do you plan to address them as the principal?

The challenge is the non-updated curriculum. The curriculum is not regularly updated And the poor quality of faculty. And the third one is less industry connected. These are the three important aspects which I feel like in general perspective many colleges are struggling. The moment you don't have a proper curriculum. Whatever faculty teaches that will not be useful for the students. And if the faculty quality is not really good you compromise on the quality of faculty then students will not be excited to learn and they will not get connected to the technology. And third one is, the moment you are not thorough with the technologies and you are not suitable in the market then eventually you will be landing in a place where there are no job opportunities. So, when there is no job opportunity obviously the people will think about alternative possibilities apart from engineering. 

What is your thought on people who believe that the current programs will go irrelevant in future?

Partially true to some extent unless otherwise you are not updated by the skilling yourself then you will be outdated in tomorrow's world. Even if tomorrow some XYZ technology, AI or others come. The foundation is problem solving and our programming ability. Your skill towards programming if you are not skilled in programming if you are not good at problem solving. Obviously, you will be lost in the market if you don't adapt to the changes. But if you are good at problem solving, you are good at logical analysis and logical thinking. If you do not update yourself obviously it will happen. But I am sure that it may not be true in all cases. There is a lot of keen watching on the developments in the market in the industry and whichever technology comes in that will not really impact our students or anything as long as you are fully skilled up. So more than just going like a program based teaching approach we are adopting a problem solving approach for the students.

What kind of steps KLH is taking in order to bridge the gap between academia and the real industry world?

If a student is continuously doing industry certification frequently every year that is being required by industry I do not think there is a gap between industry and academia in our case. Because we are always keenly watching what is required today. If there is new technology,. Immediately we will drive our students towards it. So we are trying to bridge it or even nullify the gap between industry and academia. If the student sees the outside world they should not feel surprised. They should not feel what is going on. What I learnt is different. Yeah. That is not there with KLU because the student is exposed to technologies right from the first year itself. Without even depending on the theoretical approach or regular age old practices.

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What is your vision as the principal of KLH newly established campus for the coming years.

We want to make KL University one of the best universities in the country. That is our long vision. We always have a lot of luxury to start something new. Which may not be the case for existing organizations and its operations. When you start, you can try the best practices available. So with my vast experience of 21 years in teaching in India and abroad I have equipped all the best practices and through the best practices we would like to be on the top by establishing more centers of excellence. By training our faculty members and by providing the internships from the first year itself , by providing good placement packages and by providing a wonderful platform for entrepreneurship as well.