“Budding young engineers have to inculcate the skill to challenge the existing technology and come with creative ideas to transform society. This is the right time in their lives to become entrepreneurs,” said Mohan Kumar, Executive Director, Norwest Venture partners. He was speaking during the Graduation Day address at CMR Institute of Technology.
K.C. Ramamurthy, Chairman, CMR Group of Institutions, presided over the ceremony. Teachers H.N. Shankar and Murali Shankar, who received the IEEE awards, were felicitated.
Over 900 engineers and management students graduated. As many as 56 students who topped the college and the university were felicitated.
MVJCE Graduation Day
MVJ College of Engineering (MVJCE) celebrated its 27th Graduation Day recently. It was attended by over 600 students with their families and faculty.
The chief guest was Sanjib Kumar Pattanaik, Director of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi, and the event was presided over by K.S. Shanmukharadhya, Principal, MVJCE.
Addressing the graduating students, Mr. Pattanaik said, “Learning is a continuous process and therefore each one should fulfil his or her dreams and aspirations and make life successful. The meaning of education is to draw out the knowledge from within by questioning and analysing. According to an AICTE survey, 75 per cent of engineering students are unemployed. This is because there is a gap between academics and industry. Therefore we as academicians should bridge this gap by having collaboration with companies.”
The chief guest awarded all the 21 VTU rank holders with gold medals and certificates.
Seminar
Eminent personalities from across the globe participated in the second international seminar on ‘Philosophy of education’ organised recently by Azim Premji University.
The three-day event was the culmination of the seminar series which started with two regional seminars in Almora (Uttarakhand) and Jaipur (Rajasthan) in March-April.
The second edition of the seminar was engaged with critical issues on four themes which are significant to education – Social Justice, Indian Philosophical Thought, Policy Issues, and Education Studies. Papers on issues related to teaching and teacher education were also presented.
The scholars who spoke included Gopal Guru from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Theodore Lewis from University of Minnesota on ‘Social Justice’; Stephen Phillips from University of Texas and Sundar Sarukkai from Manipal University on ‘Indian Philosophical Thought’; John Furlong from Oxford University and Rohit Dhankar from Azim Premji University on ‘Education Studies’; and Sudhir Krishnaswamy from Azim Premji University and Padma Sarangapani from Institute for Social and Economic Change on ‘Policy and Education’.
The international speakers who shared their views and thoughts on various topics during these three days included Elizabeth Rata (University of Auckland), Geoffrey Hinchliffe (University of East Anglia), Christopher Winch (King’s College, London), Stephen Giulio (New Mexico State University), Milbrey McLaughlin (Stanford University), and Krassimir Stojanov (Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt).
Besides many international philosophers and educationists, the seminar saw a gathering of Indian philosophers and educationists, including Shrinivasa Varakhedi (Karnataka Sanskrit University), Heeraman Tiwari (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Poonam Batra (Delhi University), Ravi Subramaniam (TIFR Mumbai), and Neera Chandhoke (Delhi University).
Conference
The seventh IETE annual conference on RF, Microwave and Wireless (ICon RFW-14) jointly organised by IETE Bangalore Centre and Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering was held at HKBKCE, Bangalore.
Over 200 papers were received out of which 72 were selected for presentation.
College Day
Shirdi Sai Engineering College, Anekal, celebrated ‘College Day’ with the theme “Road safety”. Chief guest Viswanathan, Global Head-Engineering Hiring, Wipro Technologies, released the college magazine “Sai Spandana”. He spoke to the students about the competition with nearly 4,000 engineering colleges producing 14 lakh engineers every year. He advised the students to possess academic excellence, all-round development, and communication and aptitude skills to ensure placements on campus.
The guest of honour, B. Dayananda, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Bangalore, in his address, asserted that nearly 1.3 lakh deaths are reported annually in accidents in the age group of 19 to 35 years. This is considered to be the highest in the world.
He advised educational institutes to take up the responsibility of enlightening the public on road safety.
Y. Vijayakumar, Principal, B. Shadaksharappa, Vice-Principal, and R. Arunkumar, management representative, also addressed the gathering.
Milagro
A two-day intercollegiate cultural festival ‘Milagro14’ organised by the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore, was inaugurated by actress and dancer Bhavana Ramanna and actor and director Pavan Wadeyar.
Venugopal K.R., Principal, UVCE, observed that the students who are engaged in cultural activities are the ones who are driven towards achieving excellence in their academics. He said that extracurricular activities are necessary to keep the students’ mind and body sound that enables them to achieve success in their career.
K.K. Seethamma, Registrar, Bangalore University, was present at the programme.
French contest
Maleva Robert, a student of the Alliance Française de Bangalore, and a copywriter, has won the first prize at a national level blurb-writing competition in French organised by the Institut Français, the cultural department of the French Embassy in India.
Maleva (23) had participated in a blurb-writing workshop at the Alliance Française conducted by the Director of Courses, Alexandra Dourver, after which she decided to participate in the contest. She has won a two-week all-expense paid language training course in France.
She says that her blurb was about embracing one’s own complexities without being too hard on oneself.
