Prof. Shridhar B Dandin is the Dean of Engineering and Computer Science and Applied Science faculty at Sarla Birla University, Ranchi. He did my engineering in Computer Science and Engineering from Basaveshwar Engineering College, under Karnataka University, Dharwad. He also completed his master's degree from BITS Pilani. As the university had collaborated with French universities, he is doing my research in the field of Data Visualization through INSAR and French University.

Now, he is working with Sarla Birla University as Dean of Engineering and Computer Science and Applied Science faculty. Prof. Shridhar has been associated with Sarla Birla University since 2020.

Sarla Birla University (SBU)

What inspired you to pursue a career in higher education administration, and what drew you to your current role as a Dean? 

Basically, I love teaching, so when I go into the classroom to teach, I interact with the students. While teaching, you will come to understand the administrative needs or say the difficulties faced by the students. So of course, after getting some experience in the teaching field naturally you will look for administrative work and that automatically comes for a teacher, as a teacher, you should also have administrative strength in you because we not only teach to the students but, we have to make them learn. To make their learning cycle complete, they should be monitored and mentored throughout their semester, throughout their study of period in the university or in an institution. That made me choose to answer some challenges in the administrative work as a dean.

What are your primary responsibilities as Dean and how do you balance them with other aspects of your job? 

As I said, I see a basic job of mine as I admire it, it is teaching because without teaching I cannot feel myself and I cannot survive because I love teaching and it is my passion. And naturally, whenever we have some sort of administrative job as a dean, my roles and responsibilities are to ensure that all the classes are properly held, every teacher is doing their justice, every teacher when they go into the classroom they should ensure that yes they have properly prepared for the class and they have to deliver exactly say if the period is for 45 minutes or 50 minutes or 1 hour, they should ensure that yes they are going to deliver and they have to cross-check with the students whether they have learned or not because that learning cycle completion is very important. So, I look after whether the imparting of the teaching is properly done or not. Naturally in order to do that we have to properly allocate the subjects to the proper teacher; we have to ensure that the teacher is fully prepared for that subject or not and before going into the classroom whether they are prepared or not and after the completion of the learning activities whether they are following it or not. They have to do the follow-up, they have to prepare the question papers, they have to prepare the model papers, they have to give the model answers. We have to test the students also and the students can be tested only by means of putting them into examination or examining them. So, we have to ensure that every fundamental aspect of the student is clear because when we grow and when we move to any outside world, not a lengthy answer is required, a very short answer of a fundamental concept is very important. So, we focus on the fundamental aspects of the students.

What are the challenges you faced/ are facing to uplift the quality of education of your department?

It is a very nice question because whenever we say higher education, naturally everyone thinks that in higher education, educating their students is easy, really it is very difficult because the students have come from after completing 12th and that 12 years of formal education. So, when they do formal education, we have to ensure that the fundamental concepts may be in terms of communication languages, and aesthetic skills they have learned, and we have to ensure that they come up with those fundamental needs. So, if they do not come up with those needs naturally as a higher education provider, we need to think that they should come with the proper preparation and they should not come by force, because nowadays, I feel that the parents are forcing them to do a selected higher education we are not giving the students a choice or to do select as per their interest. Probably the parents are forcing them or playing the role in selecting the career of the student.

Not only this, another important challenge that we are facing is well-trained teachers, the teachers are definitely not trained because in primary education or in senior secondary education, the teachers are from the background that they complete B. Ed, M. Ed, something like that where they are really trained how to teach the students. But in higher education, there is no such formal training, the only thing is they have to attend some sort of trainings but those trainings are not really formal training, so that is the major challenge we are facing we are not getting trained teachers and as a dean I need to take care of their training first because when they go and try to deliver their lecture in the classroom, I should ensure that my students should not be at loss. So that is the challenge I face, it is a really very difficult situation for us to train the teachers for teaching.

What new initiatives and collaborations has the University established with Industry Leaders to promote industry-specific courses?

Basically, as a university, we have at our disposal to work with the syllabus, contents of the syllabus, and decision of the course structure. Every individual department takes care of this but we insist on the department people that they should involve at least one or two members from the industry because here we have very good nearby industries in and around Ranchi. Periodically we call them, and we even go to the industry, and we look for the latest technologies that they are using, the latest tools that they are applying and utilizing. So based on the needs of the industry, we put a part of the unit or say even part of the syllabus itself to cover the latest aspects of the industry requirement. Not only that, we will collaborate with different foreign universities as we have collaborated with US Universities, and some French universities, we have planned the collaboration with Australian universities also. So, these collaborations will give us a strength on what or how those people are imparting higher education and that thing will help us to adopt the changes into the syllabus. So, this is how we are doing our modification or say construction of the syllabus based on industry and collaboration needs.

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What do you think should be the University’s top priority over the next 10 years? 

The top priority for the next 10 years, naturally, we are planning for some new courses to be introduced, we are planning for courses that are basically based on skill development because we not only make our students to only learn, we don’t want to make our student's job seekers, but we want to make our students job givers. It means, we basically focus on such type of programmes where the students not only set up their own startups or say set up their own business, because after setting up the business, naturally what happens, they are not seeking jobs in any other companies, in fact, they will try to provide jobs to other needy people of the society and they will serve the nation. So, basically, we aim to develop global leaders. So, for the next 10 years, our aim will be to prepare the servants for the nation, to prepare the entrepreneurs for the nation and to prepare, above all, a good human being for the society. So, the need of the hour is we must make the students a good human being first, so that will be the aim for our next 10 years. We are going to prepare some good human beings for the state, not only for the state but for the nation.

What do you see as the university’s greatest strengths?

The strength is naturally, our excellent management team, they have really high thinkers. With the blessings of great people like the Late Shree Vasant Kumar Birla and late Shrimati Sarla Devi Birla, they always thought is, education imparting is a noble job, it is not just a mere another industry. So, education is what we can call a Bhakti even if it is a part of Bhakthi. So, what Bhakthi means by that is, we have to serve society because we get many things from society, in terms of this we have an opportunity to serve the people. So basically, as a Bhakti Yoga, we want that, we will serve the people we want to serve the people, so that is the basic aim behind imparting this higher education as a university.

With the competition being so high, how would you guide your students to survive in such competitive scenarios?

Yes, correct, in the market, everywhere competition is there. So naturally when there is competition, I should be prepared for it, that is what I put across to our students also, they should be real competitors. See, competition is nothing but I have to face the challenge, my students must learn how to face the challenge, so once they learn how to face the challenge, we will prepare them to face the challenges because whenever I am teaching them programming, I throw a problem to them then, before giving any solution to them, I ask them to think over the solution, if you understand the problem properly then the solution you come out will be accepted by the customers. Suppose I am developing the software for the customer, the customer will accept only when I understand their requirements. So, understanding the problem is a very important aspect, if you understand the problem, you know the basic things, then build basically a small prototype, and then keep on iterating on the prototype to come out with the solution. So that is how I prepare the students to face the challenges and face the competition.

Any suggestions you would like to give to the current youth and the aspiring students?

The only thing I want to give my suggestion to the youth is, please don’t get involved in any other misleading activities because, nowadays, we see the technology we have to make the best use of it. Everywhere and everything wherever you go, the technology gives you, say there are boons there are curses. We should not go to the bad part of technology, we have to move to the best part of the technology and good part of the technology, if I have a mobile, I should not waste my time doing or spending more time on social activities, I mean in the social media rather than I have to give time to that also but the very limited time I should focus and I have to make use of the mobile for my study. I can learn so many things in online mode, even without the help of a teacher, everyone can do their own work through so many tutorial packages that are available. So, my suggestion to the youth will be to put the technology to its best use, don’t fall behind it. So that will be, and it will naturally be that your fundamental concepts must be clear wherever you go, go with your clear fundamental concepts. So that will be the message I would like to give to my students.