Four Tamil Nadu tech institutes win awards

The institutions are Thiagarajar Polytechnic College, Salem, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, and Vel Tech Multi Tech Dr Rangarajan Dr Sakunthala Engineering College, Chennai, and Sri Eshwar College of Engineering, Kondampatti, Coimbatore.

The winners were announced at a ceremony during Knowledgexpo, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the department of industrial policy and promotion at Greater Noida on Thursday. Nine institutes across the country, three in the diploma and nine in degree category, won a total of 12 awards.

Mr C.Valliappa, chairman of the Thiagarajar Polytechnic college, said that their college was started 55 years ago to provide high quality technical education. “Our college has a sound industry background, which helped us train our students, thus helping us win the award.”

Listing out the initiatives that their college had done to bridge the institution-industry gap, Prof. V Abhai Kumar, principal of Thiagarajar College of Engineering, said that they had a four-pronged approach, including having industry experts teach students and industry collaboration for research and development.

“Industry experts teach a course for 14 hours a semester so that students can become industry-ready. We also have an incubated company on our campus, which creates products incubated by use. Efforts like these could have made the jury select our college for the award,” he added.

Thiagarajar College of Engineering was started in 1957 and is one of the oldest and most reputed engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu.

The best performing institutes were selected after a three-month long online survey and a subsequent three-month jury process. More than 50 experts from industry and academia took part in the jury process, which included visits to institutes for on-site assessment of industry linkages with

them.