Nilgiri College Of Arts And Science: Strategically Converting Unstructured Learning of Students into Performable Varieties

Deepshikha Singh
Rashid Gazzali, Managing Director, Nilgiri College Of Arts And Science
With a try to make the education quality flourish by involving innovative-modern training technologies for high skilled studentship, Nilgiri College of Arts and Science started on 2012. It started with a prime idea to create an activity oriented academic atmosphere, help students to learn core subjects and up-skill at the same time. Because Nilgiri College believed students are acquiring graduation/post-graduation degrees without industrial skill-sets, the college began with knowledge, skills and attitude enhancement lessons by fostering real-life training programs. From nurturing psycho motor skills to theoretical know-how to the highest level of students' writing or artistic expertise, Nilgiri College follows an Outcome Based Education (OBE) system. The OBE system is the academic uniqueness of Nilgiri College ensuring students are completing mainstream commerce, management, computer science, core science, and arts subjects with sufficient skills in salesmanship, retail management, accounting, finance, entrepreneurial, IT, gardening, farming, fashion designing and many other areas. In short, once the students complete graduation/post-graduation from Nilgiri College, they become confident with their acquired skills.

"Accommodating more than 1000 students in an academic year, Nilgiri College is aimed at becoming an innovative learning and development center"

Promoting Career Improvement Programs

In every topic, Nilgiri College has set certain OBEs for students. "Even though students pass examinations with good marks, sometimes they don't understand the subjects' aspects in detail. They don't get skilled, where in contrast, the industry demands a skilled generation. So, we resegregate the students after third semester into two pools. Pool one is for students that wish to pursue higher education research and development programs. We guide them in quantitative examination (intellectual kind of exercises), so that they can enroll in a premium research institute. Second pool is for students that wish to join the private or government workforce. We have been promoting non-cliche premium recruitment at overseas and within the country," says Rashid Gazzali, Managing Director, Nilgiri College of Arts and Science. For every pool of students, there is a kind of add-on programs on topics like communication, ethics, technology, finance etc. that further supplement students' career progress.

A well-maintained modern infrastructure with advanced facilities for teaching-learning creates a unique ambiance for education. More than that, the college campus is located at Thaloor, Konnachal in The Nilgiris District which is a calm and peaceful place. Adding to these captivating learning scenarios, modern technologies, advanced computer lab facility, Google Classroom boost the learning experience. "As we have sophisticated computer lab, Government of Tamil Nadu has selected us the only one online exam centre for TRB Exams in Nilgiri district. Also, we have collaborated with Multimedia University of Malaysia (MMU, one of the top 200 universities in the world for learning advanced multimedia) and created internship opportunities," states Rashid. Nilgiri College also offers personal mentoring in other parameters like character and intellectual thought development.

Delivering To Students' Needs

A strict student-faculty evaluation process keeps a check on the growth. Non-credential experts and mentors from different fields come and monitor the classes, evaluate the performance. They cater to the needs of training programs in newest methodologies of teaching-learning process. They use smart-class note, PPT (power point presentation), cloud classroom interactions for perfecting the teaching-learning process. "Instead of making lesson plans, we have customized the entire process where each faculty gets one hour to make the students understand the teachings. We take regular feedback from students and evaluate the faculties on regular basis," expresses Rashid. While there are students who cannot pursue higher education due to unstable financial situations, Nilgiri College advances for their rescue. The college has different scholarship schemes like minority scholarship, merit cum means scholarship, Bharathiar Scholarship, APJ Kalam Scholarship, Kaizen Merit Scholarship that stimulate the thriving students to pursue higher studies. In addition, Nilgiri College gives students excellence awards and cash rewards.

Under the chairmanship of Dr. Alungal Muhammed and guided by Prof. E. Balagurusamy, Nilgiri college has signed into tying up with premium national and international institutions like Central University of Kerala, SNR College, institutions in Bengaluru and other abroad institutions, Nilgiri College increases students/staff exchange programs for research and development. Apart from this, MoUs with Infosys and other MNCs help in students’ training programs and placements. The students get community engagement projects and also participate in government schools, preschool education programs. "Looking aside from the academic programs, the students take part in NSS (National Service Scheme), NCC (National Cadet Corps), women welfare cells where they support the communities and the downtrodden suffering people. Recently, they spent time with parents from old-age homes. All these programs are designed so that students can experience the real-life scenarios. Even in sports, arts, writing competitions, they have gained ranks at the university level. Every year, at least one student is selected for Dr. Ambedkar Puraskar by the university," elucidates Rashid.

Accommodating more than 1000 students in an academic year, Nilgiri College is aimed at becoming an innovative learning and development center. The other areas that are supporting the cause are Prime Minister's fit India movement at the campus. "We are on the verge to achieve autonomous status because of teaching-learning process guided by Prof. Balagurusamy (former Vice-Chancellor of Anna University), K.K.N. Kurup (former Chancellor of Calicut University) and Dr. Dason (former registrar of Central University of Tamil Nadu). We follow LGMC which means Learning-Growing-Maturing-Content. It is the key philosophy for students' learning benefits. It maximizes students' strengths and minimizes their weaknesses," asserts Rashid. In between this, Nilgiri College keeps students happy as it motivates them to join in traditional events like Badaga Dance (traditional Tamil Nadu dance). A whooping 1600+ students participated in the college campus, thus creating a world record!

Rashid Gazzali, Managing Director

Rashid has valuable certifications in International Training, Human Resource Consulting, Authoring, Orating and Social Working. He holds the position of Managing Director at Inspora International Institute, Bengaluru and Executive Director at Sign Institute of Social Leadership at Wayanad in India. Rashid has been able to provide transformative training sessions to secondary school students as well as corporate business men.

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