HITAM: Preparing Students to Join the Global Workforce
I have been extremely fortunate to have studied engineering at one India’s premier institutions, the Government College of Engineering Pune (COEP), and to have then pursued my PhD at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. While getting admission into COEP was certainly a major milestone in my life, the first 6 months in Cincinnati were incredibly transformative for me. I quickly realized what it was like to compete on a global scale, and was shocked at how much better prepared my classmates from the US, Germany, China and even other parts of India were, compared to my own academic preparation. The academic rigor at the University of Cincinnati and the high expectations that were set for the students really pushed me to up my game and to achieve better results. While this targeted my goal-oriented and performance-oriented nature at that point in life, the way the US higher education system is inherently built and the way many professors engage their students ended up reawakening within me a desire to learn and not just do well on tests.
After getting my PhD, I spent more than 20 years in faculty positions at three different US universities, each of which uniquely shaped my perspectives on higher education. At Oklahoma State, which is a land-grant university with a mission to serve the surrounding region, I met students from rural America, hungry to learn and eager to improve their family’s economic situation, much as we see in our institutions in Telangana. At Arizona State University, I was part of the great experiment that was the execution of Dr. Michael Crow’s vision for a New American University. And finally, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), I found what I believe was the best fit for me in terms of the focus on undergraduate education. With many of its programs ranked in the top 10 in the US for undergraduate programs, MSOE has long had a reputation for high standards and academic rigor. As a result, it has attracted the best students in the mid-western United States and beyond. In turn, the students expect extremely high standards from the faculty and from the university, which drives an overall culture of excellence. During my time at MSOE, based on my prior interactions with HITAM, I realized that HITAM, with its relationship-rich approach to education, had excellent alignment with MSOE and in fact could very well become the MSOE of India. Thus, when the time came for me to consider moving to India after spending 26 years in the US, HITAM was my first choice, and I was overjoyed when I was offered this position.
In my new role as the Director at the Hyderabad Institute of Technology and Management, my hope is to bring this rich variety of life and professional experiences that I have had in the US to help prepare our students to join the global workforce and have a global perspective. This will take on many forms, from training the HITAM faculty on student-centric pedagogical techniques, revamping curricula and assessment practices, engaging highly qualified faculty for teaching emerging topics, to establishing infrastructure that provides our students with immersive learning environments. A number of initiatives on campus are already underway, and I expect that the initial impact of these activities will be experienced by the faculty and the students even before the end of the current academic year. Larger transformative steps are being taken for
the start of the 2025-26 school year, so that the entire institution can grow in our practices, academic and beyond. I am grateful for being able to play a part in this tremendous transformation of HITAM.
