Echelon Institute of Technology, Director: Dr. Sudarshan Goswami Interview

Dr. Sudarshan Goswami is the director of the Echelon Institute of Technology. He possesses a total of 20+ years of experience in the information technology domain. He has worked with a few engineering and management institutes in Delhi NCR as well as Bhopal. He has also worked as a training head with a few multinational companies (MNCs). His research areas are enterprise computing and distributed databases. He has also done his Ph.D. in distributed databases. He has recently joined the Echelon Institute of Technology as the Director of the institute. 

What are the key factors that keep you connected with the education sector?

“Providing students with industry-oriented skills at an educational institute”

While in industry, I realized that the students and the candidates whom I met were not up to the mark, they were not industry-ready. So since I was also connected with the education domain I realized the need for industry-related courses to be incorporated in the education domain for that I communicated with lots of Vice-chancellors, directors, management key position holders, and then later on when I shifted to the education domain I tried to incorporate all these things. My experience at NIT ltd has served great for me. In top rankers Bangalore, we created tools for this, that can be covered some other time. So this is what I think keeps me connected.

What is your philosophy of leadership?

“Efficiently using Man Power for achieving the mission by following the vision”

In any organization, we have so much manpower. Some of them are better utilized, some of them are less utilized. So with the opportunity of being the leader here, I wish to incorporate all in at least some functions to delegate responsibility to all to perform, to achieve the mission and vision once defined by the institute, by the department. This is what I think is required.

How do you make the curriculum industry-oriented?

“Providing students with industrial visits to gain practical experience”

Well, Echelon Institute of Techn itself has no curriculum. We have the following syllabus and curriculum provided by YMCA University. We cannot amend that, we cannot add or subtract anything from that. Apart from this, since I realized the industry requirement, we don't have a few latest technologies in our curriculum. So for that, we have a plan to run a few short-duration courses on our campus, maybe free of cost for the students, that can accommodate future placement opportunities for them in the future.

What should be the Institute’s top priority over the next 10 years?

“To get the accreditation for NAT and MBA in the next 10 years”

5 years back we were NBA aggregated, Echelon was the first choice in this region. We want to achieve the same. For the next 10 years, we will go for NAT, we will go for MBA again. This is our top priority.

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What would you like people to know about your institute?

"The management aims to become autonomous"

Those who have visited the campus will feel that this institute is very lush and green. But until-unless you move into the campus, in the buildings, in the laboratories, you will not realize what we have. We have the best utilities, best apparatus, and in this region. With my overall experience with the universities and the engineering institutions, I found that this institute is having one of the best laboratories which I have realized. All the apparatus are functioning, this is one good thing. Plus this campus is designed for engineering institutions. Physically challenged students can navigate in any corner of the campus, it is designed in such away. We have a lift facility for these types of challenged students to move up and downstairs. One thing I would like to quote here is "The management aims to become autonomous". So shortly, you'll find that Echelon is an autonomous institute. Maybe a university, or an institute.

What are some of the biggest challenges both for higher education in India and for Echelon Institute specifically?

“Low Internet bandwidth of the biggest challenges both for higher education in India and for Echelon Institute”

Internet bandwidth is not good in India, you all know that. 5G is not available everywhere in the country. Since we are forced to go into this online mode, this is one of the biggest challenges. Our teachers are not qualified even to run this type of technology. Only IT-related people were there and they were also not all confident to do so. But in this covid pandemic period, all the teachers whether they are from IT or not, whether they are from the smaller institutions, all have taken this challenge very well and this will be the challenge for a few more years.

Recordkeeping, since I am a data science technology-related person, I know this will create a huge amount of data on the campus. Keeping, managing, and maintaining that record is a very huge responsibility for engineering institutions. These resources will be required by future aggregation bodies also. The challenge is to create data storage facilities within the campus, which at this moment, Institutions are lacking.

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What advice would you give to the students for them to have a prosperous career ahead?

“Students should focus on the changing demands of the industries and adjust themselves according to it”

For this, I would like to firstly say a quote in Hindi. "सोए हुए शेरों को शिकार नहीं मिलता, शिकार मिलता है सिर्फ़ जागरूक शेरों को।" Who is the "जागरूक शेर?" One who has been preparing for many years. You may be very good in academics, you may be very good in programming, you may be very good in your laboratory-related things but if you are not "जागरूक" you will miss it. Now, who is "जागरूक”? A lion who sharpens his nails daily, who does his running practice daily so when the time comes he will not miss his target. This covid pandemic is an opportunity to sharpen your skills, introspect yourself, what you can do, what changes you can bring in your life. Believe me, you will not get this type of opportunity in at least the next 100 years. You are so free to learn new things, new technologies, to get new certifications. You can gain insights into other areas also which are not relevant to your particular branches. So my message to youth is to utilize this time because you will not get it again.