Welcome to the May edition of our newsletter!
About 80% of India’s 10 lakh engineering graduates every year hail from ~3,000 colleges across the country. Many of these are located on the outskirts of cities and in rural areas. Their students get little hands-on experience and do not have exposure to industry. They struggle to get an engineering job after graduation. However, from experience, we find that many of these students are enthusiastic and have the potential to become good design engineers, given the right opportunities. The question is how to transform this large pool of aspirants into good design engineers needed by Indian industry?
The key is training of the college faculty in industry practices, ensuring that they have hands-on experience in designing and building useful products, in innovative thinking and entrepreneurship. With this experience and industry connect, the faculty can prepare students for industry year after year. This is the LEAP strategy that brings lasting change into the college.
When a college signs up for LEAP, we first conduct Faculty Development Programmes (FDPs). We then help the faculty to mentor their students in product development. LEAP introduces the faculty to experts from industry and gives them opportunities for visits to industry. So far, LEAP has trained over 200 faculty in a dozen colleges. We expect to increase this to 1,000 in the coming year, and to 20,000 in 5 years. As each of these faculty inspires many students, the result will be lakhs of innovative, hands-on engineers graduated every year.
Prof. Timothy A. Gonsalves
Founding Director, IIT Mandi (2010-2020)
Founder, LEAP
Spotlight
LEAP provides IIT Style / Industry-oriented Project Based Learning to Engineering Colleges by focused programs from 1st Year to 4th Year B Tech. LEAP enables engineering students to work on real-world projects during the semester in their colleges.
This edition of the Maker Chronicles focuses on LEAP’s Faculty development program. LEAP equips faculty members by providing technical training during faculty workshops at the beginning of the program. For instance, a mechanical engineering assistant professor after successfully connecting sensors to LEDs in an Arduino FDP: “My students use Arduino in their mechanical engineering projects. I used to think this was a great achievement. Now I know it is quite simple.”
Impact
Dr. C. Sathish Kumar
PRINCIPAL
Sree Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering
(An Institute under Government of Kerala), Thiruvananthapuram
MBF in the Media
The Indian Express
“I have mentored students with their projects in Tinkerer’s Lab and in the process have developed engineering skills.”
Announcements
Vishwakarma Awards Will Return Soon
If you’re passionate about groundbreaking inventions, cutting-edge technologies, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, this is your chance to shine. Starting mid-June, Vishwakarma Awards 2024 will take in applications from the best talent around the country.
Do you have what it takes?
Follow us to stay tuned. To know more: Vishwakarma Awards
