St. Peter's Engineering College: Dr. M. Narendra Kumar, Principa

Interview by Arjun Verma

Dr. M. Narendra Kumar is currently working as the Principal of St. Peter's Engineering College, Hyderabad. He has 14 years of industrial experience at a different level in various industries and since 2002 onwards-16 years of teaching, research and administrative experience. He is also a member of professional bodies like IEEE, ISTE, CSI, and Fellow of Institute of Engineers and has Published 75 research papers in various international /national /conference journal and four books in Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

Dr. M. Narendra Kumar on his experience in the education industry

After completing my B.E. in Electrical Engineering, I joined the Industry and worked in various level from Jr. Engineer to Executive-Engineering services in different industries for 14 years. My last assignment was with Saint-Gobain Vetrotex Industries India Limited. In 2002, I joined Education industry i.e. Guru Nanak Engineering College, Hyderabad. Since last 16 years, successfully completed all the responsibilities from Asst. prof. to Professor with different administrative responsibility like the controller of examination, hod, dean,vice principal and principal. The education industry is every day challenge because we are working with a young mind and this industry gives an opportunity to serve and give back to society.

Striving for continuous improvement

Being a principal of an engineering college, primary challenge is to maintain good discipline in the campus by starting classes sharp at 9.00AM and run all the class work smoothly till the end of college time i.e. 4.20 PM. To do so, we need to see that all the students take seats in class before 9.00AM and all the teachers are present in class before them. I could achieve this with the help & co-operation of Management, HOD,and all the parents. This has given us an improvement in attendance of students and their result.

The next challenge is to deal with junior faculty, we need to train them to become better faculty through our faculty development programme and in-house training.

Placement of students is our next challenge, we have achieved a significant amount of qualityplacement with the help of our training and placement division. Training and placement division handles in-house training by regular/full-time faculty inthe regular time table of college i.e. 3 hours per week from 2^nd year onwards. Still, we are striving for the best.

We are striving to be better ranked in NIRF ranking.We had the challenge to achieve NAAC accreditation, which we have achieved last year with “A” grade and we Have three departments NBA accredited.

To do better in academics, research, placement, and entrepreneurship, we need to be independent in designing our own curriculum, this is possible when we shall have autonomy. Hence, we have submitted a request to JNTUH University and UGC to provide us autonomy at the earliest.

St. Peter's Curriculum

St.Peters Engineering College is affiliated to JNTUH Hyderabad. Hence, we need to follow curriculum and rules & regulation of Affiliated University. Still, we ensure best practices and gaps between institute and Industry by adding workshops, training, projectsand motivate students to participate in Seminars and competitions like Symposiums,cotton and SAE.

Goals for St. Peters Engineering College

St. Peters Engineering college is a more than a decade old college (Established in 2007), as we have achieved NAAC “A” grade last academic year, we are looking forward to autonomous status by end of this academic year and university status in coming few years with listed in NIRF ranking.

Ensuring the quality of education

Quality of Teaching is ensured at St. Peters Engineering College in two-phases:

Recruiting Quality faculty through a rigorous process of selection, then training them according to our requirement by guiding them by senior faculty and Faculty development programmes andworkshop from time to time.
Feedback of every teacher is monitored thrice in a semester i.e. two written feedbacks and one verbal feedback. Feedback report is shared with every faculty and enough time is given to them to improve.

Internal quality assurance cell is established to monitor quality teaching and syllabus coverage in time through teaching course files and teaching diaries and feedback from students and class representatives.

Establishing a relationship with the students

We at St. Peters Engineering college try to build trust with students by empowering them through Class representatives, Coordinators of Different professional societies, clubs and students’ council and we interact with them very frequently to understand their requirements.

We listen to them and mentor, we provide best teaching-learning process & aid and teach the importance of discipline.

Placement opportunities available at St. Peters Engineering College

The first criterion of any students getting admitted into any engineering college is a amount of placement and quality of the placement. We at St. Peters Engineering College are successful in placing 80% eligible student, rest 20% is ambitious to go higher education. For this, we have placement and training division with regular staff to train students in CRT in regular timetable 3 hours per week from2^nd-yearonwards. We are striving hard to improve quality placement and higher salary package.

Dr. Kumar’s leadership style

As a Principal, I would like my HODs to utilize their powers and control their department. If they face any problem, I am always with them to provide a solution to any problem or support them in getting a solution. I believe that the contributionof every faculty is must in the development of department /college, hence I shall deliver clear instruction with total clarity.

Leadership style is a combination of Task and relationship oriented.

Suggestions for current youth and the aspiring students

Enjoy whatever you learn, understand basic concepts, maintain the decent percentage of marks because marks matter in the carrier to get better opportunities.