To All Concerned,

I am glad to report that I made a 2 day trip on April 25-26, 2008 to our alma mater, MMMEC,
Gorakhpur during my last visit to India. With this email, I am presenting to you the picture that
emerges from various discussions I had with the administration, faculty and students – some of
them formal and some informal.

First of all I would like to extend my gratitude towards the administration in making wonderful
arrangements for my stay all the way from picking me up from the railway station and providing
me a room at the college guest house to arranging for some interaction with press reporters.
Overall I had a pleasant trip with a lot of re-living the past moments, a good understanding of
some of the current problems and getting some hope towards a glorious future for our college,
which even though we might not always find the time or the right forum to express but has a
very special corner deep in our hearts.

I was excited to see action being taken on some of the basic infrastructure issues that had
surfaced during the Alumni Meets of 2006/2007 and since then. There are definite signs of
progress towards some of those, e.g. road improvement, hostel upkeep (specially toilets), mess
operations, internet and college website access, etc. Most of these improvements were identified
during detailed administration/alumni interactions held during the Alumni Meets and in other
meetings in between. You should feel further proud to know that some of these improvements
have actually been partially funded by alumni donations. I would like to use this as an example
of how the alumni group can act as Change Agents by constantly staying engaged with our
college.

However, as we know nothing is perfect and there is lot more desired to be done to take our
college to the heights that it rightfully deserves after 46 years of its existence as one of the
handful of government run engineering colleges in a state which will be the 6th most populous
country in the world if it were a country of its own. The following are some of the issues for the
near future which I believe if addressed appropriately, will put MMMEC in a great position to
glitter in its Golden Jubilee celebrations in about four years.

1. Student cohesiveness and spirit of healthy competition

In my observations over the many annual trips that I have made to MMMEC since graduation, I
have noticed a continuous drop in student interest towards holistic development. The students are
getting more and more focused towards finding “a” job and not so much on developing the skills
necessary to be a high performing professional in the long run.

I admit that getting a job immediately upon graduation was a goal for me as well. However, I
also tried to develop life skills, e.g. leadership, time management, mastery over a certain subject
and equally importantly developing a good network of friends, seniors and juniors that I could
develop life long relationships with.

One would think, with the improvements in India’s economic conditions and the shortage of
qualified resources that it has brought with it reflected in 100%+ placements, the focus would
have shifted more towards the holistic development. But in the case of MMMEC I see otherwise.
I attribute this partly to the lack of communication, which has divided the student body into
many silos – courses (MBA/MCA students are not well integrated even after many years of
operating these courses), batches (no intermingling across batches to curb ragging), hostels, etc.
The most unfortunate part is that even within a batch there is minimal interaction these days.

In my mind, there are a couple of reasons that I think might have contributed towards this
retrogression in communications:

1.1 Lack of proper forum for channeling interactions and communications

All old clubs (e.g. CTOAN, Sanket) have been discontinued and instead a Student Activity
Center (SAC) has been formed. However, unlike the clear goal and mission that an organization
like Sanket used to have, the SAC does not seem to have a mission statement that drives its
diverse and all encompassing activities. All students are by default members of this structure but
a few seem to gain prominence and start behaving like elected politicians (raising entry barriers
for others and worse still misusing the system for financial gains). This obviously was never the
intent behind having SAC. Thus I felt a need for diversifying the structure of SAC to allow for
more faces to take up different facets of student activity. And a need for a better crystallized
structure itself that can see students involved from the first year itself, thus allowing experiences
to accrue over years.

Also, currently there is no organization that is fully “of the students, by the students and for the
students”. I think either reconstituting an old one, e.g .Sanket, or creating a new one or making
SAC operate in this mode will help in this regard.

Moreover the literary committee was cited for almost all publications but all they publish is a
literary magazine and the alumni magazine “The Malaviyan” which has been reduced to a
lifeless form. I had personally taken with me copies of actual newsletters from MIT, Wharton
Business School, Kellogg Business School, and University of Chicago for this group of students
to see and derive ideas from.

The only surviving newsletter is the ‘I-Watch’ and I got mixed feedbacks on its future aswell.

Suggestion:
- I strongly suggest that a newsletter be published with college news every semester or atleast
every year. Such a letter binds students, provides direction and helps chronicle the times for
future.
- I suggest the present publishing student body go to the library and dig out the old copies of
Sanket and The Malaviyan from the 1996-1999 years for direction and ideas.

1.2 Pervasive use of internet

Sociological studies conducted in the western world to study the impact of pervasive use of
internet on personal relations have shown a growing trend towards individualistic rather than
community based lifestyles. Unfortunately with the advent of this technology now in each hostel
room, the same trend is showing itself in the MMMEC student community as well. Students are
glued to their monitors more than they are to real life happenings – both in-campus and off-
campus. The remedy is not in eliminating access altogether but in intelligently controlling it to
provide a balanced mix of both online as well as offline interaction.

The associated problem with internet access is as to how it is used. The same students who plead
all sorts of ignorance when asked to do some basic research on foreign universities or some basic
technical solutions suddenly have all the time, energy and intellect to get to Orkut and to find
ways to circumvent the firewalls to download film songs, clippings and what not. Obviously it is
not the technical capability that they are missing but the motivation and drive to put technology
to fruitful and career enhancing uses.

Whether it was a systematic decimation, student elected choice or just pure coincidence, the
communication channels are defunct today and communication needs to be restored within the
student body.

Suggestions:
− The college desperately needs a student run body that is voluntarily active.
− A small group of students needs to be formed that can go room to room not only informing
the students about upcoming events but also “selling” the events to them. The usual excuse
given by the faculty has been akin to the fact that “you can take a horse to water but you
cannot make him drink.” Fortunately, the Government of India solved this problem long ago:
People on strikes and bhookh hartal are eventually put on saline injections and food drips.

2. MMMEC Branding

As I pointed out that MMMEC is one of the few government run engineering colleges in Uttar
Pradesh with a long history. However, we have traditionally not used this to promote our brand
to the right audience and as a result always find ourselves at a disadvantage vis-à-vis some of the
private colleges that might have started later and even might have lesser facilities and lesser
qualified staff but still do a tremendous job of promoting themselves in the minds of their targets
- potential students, recruiting companies and the public in general.

2.1 What is a brand?

Well, the Malaviyan brand exists. It’s just not a well-known or well-respected brand. What is a
well-known and respected brand? Let’s take an example: when you go to buy a Toyota car from
a show room, do you check all its parts and their assembly? No, you check a few to be certain
that it is a real Toyota and that it runs fine. Here you are relying on the “Toyota brand”, for you
know that others who have Toyota cars have seen good performance. On the other hand when
one employs a milkman to deliver milk everyday you ask around whether he adds water to the
milk or not. Depending on your feedback you might want to employ him or not. So the milkman
brand is suspect of cheating. But if over 80% milkmen were absolutely honest and never added
water to the milk they delivered then the milkman brand would have a better reputation.
Similarly, every Malaviyan (students, faculty, administration and alumni alike) needs to improve
his or her work ethic IRRESPECTIVE of what the others around him/her are doing. The other
person’s wrongdoing CANNOT be used to justify personal wrongdoing.

Essentially, the main ingredients for a good engineering school brand are: good knowledge of the
engineering branch and a professional attitude. I strongly believe we all know what we need to
do to improve on both these points but we do not and look for excuses on which to attribute their
absence.

Suggestion:
- Each faculty member, student and alumni need to work on an INDIVIDUAL level to improve
themselves and the “Malaviya” brand shall improve automatically. A lot of other pointed
suggestions are made in this regard under other headings.

2.2 Media Coverage

As an example, during my trip the administration was gracious enough to invite some press
reporters from the local media but, as expected, they were more interested in knowing whether I
watched Bhojpuri films in the US or not. I do not blame them as they were just trying to satisfy
the curiosities of their target audience, common man from Kunraghat and Khorabar.

I have said it time and again that we should build relationships with national level English media
which can project our brand positioning to the right audience – English speaking professional
class from major metro areas who might like to recruit our students or better still collaborate with
us for research or projects to take the academy-industry interaction to the next level. I will appeal
to the alumni community to leverage their networks to influence such media people to start
covering key events at MMMEC. In addition the college also should invest in putting some
advertisements in such papers highlighting our strengths and accomplishments.

Suggestion:
- Build a team of students (within SAC) of students from each year that shall interact with
media thru faculty representatives or alumni.

2.3 Standard Email Addresses

The other example, which is totally in administration’s control, is the use of official MMMEC
email addresses. It looks very unprofessional when you encounter faculty profiles for a
technology institute with yahoo, hotmail and rediffmail accounts. The college has taken the first
step towards getting the official email accounts created but what good is it if they are not being
used for ALL internal and external communications. As a policy, all official communications
should be through the MMMEC address only and the faculty profile should be updated with the
official MMMEC addresses. If individuals want these emails to be forwarded to their personal
accounts, they can set auto-forwarding on their college email addresses.

Once this basic problem is resolved, the college should think in terms of establishing some
common email groups, e.g. All-faculty, All-students, Branch-specific-all-faculty, Branch-
specific-year-specific-all-students, Year-specific-all-students, etc.
Suggestions:
- A working committee of students from each department that shall ensure the above is
regularly maintained.

2.4 Website Improvements

The look and feel for the college website is very amateurish and needs both cosmetic and
structural improvements. Now that the dynamic content is being managed within the college,
there can be greater freedom in terms of different departments managing their respective sections
although within the limits of a corporate level style guide.

Also, I have reported a virus on the main page of the site, which has not been rectified for more
than a month now.

For a lot of our potential students, recruiters, folks generally interested in MMMEC, the website
serves as the point of first interaction and we all know how important first looks are.

Suggestions:
- Extend college email ids to faculty at least thru auto-forwards to their present email accounts.
- Provide representation of each department on the college website (probably through the
individual department societies.)
- Virus removal from the college website.

2.5 Professionalism amongst faculty and students

Over the years I have noticed that the fundamental ingredients of productivity seem to be lacking
in college. One of them being English reading speed. There are numerous books and internet
sites dedicated to help people improve their reading speed. Everyone’s mind works at almost the
same speed but the speed of data input (reading speed) usually varies tremendously.

Suggestion:
- All need to improve their English reading speed. Good speed is in the 300 – 400 words per
minute ball park.

3. Faculty Interests and Motivation (or lack thereof)

Meeting the faculty was a very upsetting experience. I have classified my observations under
three major headings:

3.1 Motivation

I cannot clearly make out the sequence of cause and effect here, but just like student apathy, the
faculty also seems to have gotten very much focused on doing only the necessary and sufficient
to keep their jobs and to secure a comfortable retirement and pension. There seems to be no
ambition at a personal as well as at the college level to excel in teaching and producing
internationally competitive research. Some of them seem to be really upset with the school itself
and its very existence BUT do not want to take any initiative at their level for various reasons.

3.2 Attitude towards each other

There seems to be a “Blame everyone else” culture dominant in the faculty reflecting a strong
self-promoting attitude, which at times comes at the expense of denigrating others. It is common
to see altercations between faculty members totally forgetting the timing and the audience
present. I could see that some faculty members genuinely felt embarrassed by this whole thing
but they were few and far between and surprisingly in the junior ranks and not in the senior
faculty.

3.3 Attitude towards students

The blame game does not stop within the faculty only. At times the faculty has tried to put the
blame on the students as if they were at equal footing. I was appalled at seeing as to how little
leverage the faculty members have over the students now compared to my days at college when
we used to shudder in front of our teachers when they say that the students do not want to work.
It almost feels like the students have taken over and the faculty is saving its honor by staying
away from confronting situations. I fail to understand as to how it happened and how did the
faculty let it happen.

Suggestion:
− My personal experience, respect in academia usually comes from knowledge and support.
− Almost all the projects, and seminar presentations that I have come across seem to have been
heavily copied to the extent of word-by-word being lifted from other published works. The
teachers can at least ensure that this blatant copying does not go unchecked.

4. Alumni Interaction

I suggested that the alumni would like to help and could help with:

1. Project support for both students and faculty.

2. Help faculty get Ph.Ds.and Post Doctoral Fellowships.
3. Help build partnerships with industry.

But I also suggested that the faculty come up with interests in research and we could help them
with direction from some senior people in those areas. However, for a lot of basic research, they
can work on inter-department research projects within the college itself. For example, Comp
Science could make simulation models and Mechanical could use them. This way a lot can be
achieved.

Another problem was cited that the library had only one license seat for IEEE journals that was
tied to the computer on which it was installed. This was shown as a major bottleneck. I do not
believe it to be so as this has an easy solution in terms of license management software. They are
usually free. One can be installed and this problem would be history. However, someone in the
college will have to take the lead in doing some “solutioning” around it and implement it.

Suggestion:
- There are softwares like FlexLM which actually do this license management activity and are
free. Someone needs to implement it for the above problem.
- If a faculty representative is provided we (alumni) can work with him/her to get this resolved.

But on the whole NONE of this is possible till the faculty themselves are not interested.

Another point to bring out here is that some of us have tried various methods to interact as
alumni - working directly with students, with student-faculty groups and directly with faculty
alone. However none seems to be working towards getting traction on the alumni interaction
front. At times we have asked the students and faculty for their ideas as to how do they want
alumni help but getting a readymade project or a job is what best has come from those fertile
minds. It starts to seem like that the cart is driving the horse.

Believe me the opportunities for our faculty and students, and thus our college are endless.

Warm regards,

Anshuman Tripathi,
Batch: 1998 (Electronics)
Chief Editor,
Sanket, I-Watch, The Malaviyan (1998)