Punctuality, integrity, professional competence and a yearning to serve society are the virtues required for a successful engineering career, E. Sreedharan, former managing director of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, said here on Saturday.
Addressing the graduands at the convocation of the National Institute of Technology-Calicut (NITC) conducted online, Mr. Sreedharan said that his 67 years of professional life had taught him that mere technical knowledge would not make a person a responsible and useful engineer. “Your technical brilliance must be matched with a passion for good values, a majestic character combined with a spirit of service,” he said.
He said that the main reason why India could not emerge as a developed nation even after 73 years of Independence was the steep decline in values and principles for which this country was very famous for till a few hundred years ago.
Mr. Sreedharan told the young engineers, “Your professional success will not be measured in terms of the high positions you occupy nor the compensation packages you get, nor indeed the wealth you create for yourself. Your professional success will be measured by what changes you are able to make to improve the standard and quality of life of your fellow citizens”.
“The most important responsibility that you face as an engineer will be to protect the environment. This is very much significant as we find that out of the 20 most polluted cities of the world, 12 are in India. Engineers and scientists owe a responsibility to society and to the entire nation to preserve the environment and they need to stand firmly against environmental degradation”.
Gajjala Yoganand, Chairman, Board of Governors of NIT-C, observed that students played a significant role in building nation and it was important to encourage students to be bold, courageous, innovative, and proactive.
Earlier, P.S. Sathidevi, director-in-charge, highlighted the achievements of the institute in the academic year 2019-20.
The convocation, conducted online, saw 1,491 graduates receiving their degrees. They included 866 B.Tech., 46 B.Arch., 353 M.Tech., 10 M.Plan., 42 MCA, 35 MBA, 50 M.Sc., and 89 Ph.D degrees.
T. Bharath Bhushan Reddy of the Computer Science and Engineering branch secured the highest CGPA (9.59/10) among all the outgoing B.Tech students of the institute. He was awarded the “Bapana Gold Medal” and “Dr. Allesu Kanjirathingal memorial award”.
Among the M.Tech students, Jijy Renj C.F. from the Thermal Sciences stream of Mechanical Engineering and Pavithra T. from the Industrial Power and Automation stream of Electrical Engineering bagged the Bapana Gold Medal with a CGPA of 10 out 10.
Registrar Lt. Col. (Rtd.) Pankajakshan K. and Dean (Academic) Dr. Saly George oversaw the convocation ceremony in the virtual mode.
