We are into November now and just 2 months away from end of 2017 – Centenary year of UVCE and we wanted to see what best can be achieved to make UVCE a better place. But before that a look back into what has happened so far:

  • April : UVCE Centenary 5K Marathon was conducted which was attended by over 800 participants – faculty, alumni and students.
  • August – UVCE Centenary Souvenir Avalokana was launched – a one of kind document covering UVCE history, legacy – which was attended by more than 300 alumni.
  • September – UVCE Centenary Teachers Day was organized by the college where the retired faculty were honored along with some eminent faculty. Also, UVCE Engineers Day was conducted by the college.

We are sad that an actual huge celebration has not happened yet. To pacify ourselves, we wanted to point a fact that – educational calendar starts from July; So, to keep the hope alive, we are talking about the time till next year June!

Meanwhile, apart from celebrations what holds more eminence is to execute our belief towards making UVCE a better institution. It should regain its lost glory and heritage and become a role model in the future. On the same lines, we made an effort and created a draft for the same talking about UVCE: Next 100 Years and kept it for public review.

To discuss about it further, we invited an eminent panel of alumni for a short meeting few days back at Century Club that included:

  • Dr M R Sreenivasan, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri
  • Prof Roddam Narasimha, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan
  • Dr V K Aatre, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan
  • Dr Prahlada, Padma Shri
  • Prof N R Shetty, Former Vice-chancellor, Bangalore University
  • Dr Chidananda Gowda, Former Vice-chancellor, Kuvempu University
  • Air Vice Marshall Abhaya Kumar, Retd AVM
  • Maj Gen Neelkantappa, Retd Major General
  • Govind Lakshman, President of Polyurethane Products Corporation
  • B V Jagadish​, Rajyotsava Awardee, Karnataka Government

While few of them were unable to attend to due to unavoidable circumstances yet shared their opinions and thoughts via mail, we are thankful to everyone who attended the meeting. Also Sridhar Gowda and Satish from VisionUVCE Team were a part of the discussion as well.
We are also thankful to Principal of UVCE, Dr Venugopal K R who joined the meeting (at his personal capacity) at a short notice because the alumni insisted him to be part of the discussion.

Lot of concerns were raised during the meeting and a summary of the discussion is as below:

Dr M R Srinivasan was concerned about the entire educational atmosphere itself in general. He was of the opinion that UVCE was built with a great vision, but was not able to stay in that path in the past few years. We needed our leaders to come up with a plan to make UVCE a world-class institution. Due to lack of initiatives at the various levels, the college is in the current scenario. There should be a unified effort to restructure the college at the earliest possible.

Dr V K Aatre focused on the future of Engineering as such. There are hybridization of various departments and new branches like “Sociology in Engineering” taking place around the globe and we are still lagging behind in such innovative measures. Despite his and Dr Srinivasan’s repeated efforts, there has been very little action taken. He said a novel approach is very much necessary to bring back the golden days of UVCE.

Dr Chidananda Gowda, Retd Air ViceMarshall AbhayaKumar, Ret Major General Neelkantappa also agreed to the above mentioned points. It was a unanimous opinion that UVCE should be made autonomous at the earliest under the supervision of a Governing Council which will give roadmap for a short term plan and long term goal. Keeping California Institute of Technology as a role model (which is very similar in strength and areas of education) would be ideal to take UVCE in the right direction.

B V Jagadeesh, who is in USA & could not attend the meeting sent his thoughts via mail. He agreed to the above points and mentioned the focus should be on Quality of Faculty, Infrastructure, Research Work along with creating an ecosystem with Industry experts, corporations and affiliation to other top universities. Govind Lakshman who is from US too, gives his consent in the same lines and wishes to develop UVCE into Centre of Excellence by proper planning and with everyone coming together.

We were overwhelmed by the response and enthusiasm of such eminent alumni, and also sad that the concerned authorities have not approached them or utilized their expertise. But, to make sure that there is a positive outcome of the meeting, we finalized on a Single point Agenda – Demand for a Governing Council for UVCE from the concerned authorities.

We will create a draft proposal based on the above previous draft created and additional points from the Advisory members. We are working on it and will share the draft with everyone shortly. Meanwhile, we request that everyone who is concerned about UVCE join hands with us in all possible ways. Are you interested? Let us know