PERSPECTIVE PLAN
2017 – 2022
Issued by the IQAC, of
Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College
Version 1, Dated 30th July 2017
Effective Date: 1st August 2017
Ramnarain Ruia College was established in 1937 by the Shikshana Prasaraka Mandali, Pune. It was the first institution to be started by an indigenous private organization, in the city of Mumbai. Shikshana Prasaraka Mandali, an education trust registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, was established in 1883 by a small group of dedicated school teachers, with an inclusive motto ‘Education for All’. Ramnarain Ruia College is one of the 36 institutions managed by the S.P. Mandali, Pune and is known for its pursuit of excellence, quality, and global recognition in the field of higher learning and training. Ramnarain Ruia College, since its inception, has been striving for all-round growth of learners through various innovative academic, co-curricular and extra-curricular programs. The College continually strives to meet its twin goals of ‘Equity and Excellence’ in local and global needs of higher education and training.
Ruia College is committed to create the right environment for students to - Explore, Experience and Excel. From July 2017, the College has been accorded the status of an autonomous institution affiliated to the University of Mumbai. With autonomy, the College has the freedom to design its own curriculum to excel in the field of imparting education. The management and staff of the College is committed to responsibly utilize the liberties provided under autonomy, to make the teaching-learning process at the College a more cherish-able and enlightening experience at all levels.
The College caters to several stake holders including the students, the parents, the alumni, the industry and other employers, the faculty, the staff and the society at large in its activities and programs. The College needs to identify and address the growing needs of the stakeholders through its various programs and extension activities. Thus, the Institution will educate and create awareness about social responsibility, citizenship values and environmental issues.
The College primarily caters to the student population of Mumbai region and the Western Maharashtra. It currently, offers core courses in Arts and Science with several combinations of subjects. The College offers 15 subjects for Arts and 13 in the Science. It offers about 103 permutations in Arts and about 15 permutations in the Science faculty. The College also offers 12 Ph.D programs (03 in Arts and 09 in Science).It also offers three vocation degree programs under the DDU- KAUSHAL Kendra namely, BVoc in Green House Management, Pharma Analytical Sciences and Tourism and Travel Management. The College has one division for Marathi Medium students and has a Foreign Language Centre which offers courses in Spanish, Japanese, German, and Chinese.
The College encourages research at both UG, and PG levels and its research activities are supported by several funding agencies of the Government like UGC, DST, DBT, NMPB, AYUSH and several industries. As an acknowledgement of its research consultancies, the College is recognized as Scientific and Industrial Research Organization by DSIR, Govt. of India. The College encourages innovations through its separate Cell for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship. The College also has active research collaborations with other reputed institutions and organizations at local, regional, and national levels. Ruia College has signed MOUs for Higher Education Academic Partnership with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (2014), Westchester University (2016) and Harrisburg University (2017). The
College houses a state of the art ‘Cell for Students with Special Needs’ catering to the special requirements of the differently-abled students and a ‘Centre for Mindfulness and Wellbeing’ to impart valuable life skills to the students and faculty.
To emerge as a Centre of higher learning and innovative research to meet the challenges of a global society.
Mainstreaming the practices that facilitate intellectual, emotional, physical, and cultural growth of students.
Keeping in mind the vision and mission statements, the College has formulated its various goals and objectives which are as follows:
· To provide high quality, affordable and inclusive education to all sections of society including various disadvantaged groups
· To foster global competence and support career building of students through various courses, workshops, seminars, events, competitions, and industrial visits
· To motivate the students to excel in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities and encourage excellence in sports
· To make the students aware of the various conventional and non-conventional career opportunities and professions
· To educate and create awareness about social responsibility, citizenship values and environmental awareness
· To introduce skill-based programs to enhance their employability and inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship.
· To organize various academic research and capacity building activities.
· To encourage participation of faculty in workshops, conferences, and seminars.
The College takes an inclusive approach to ensure all-round growth and success of its learners. The Institution has special focus on the transformation of its average learners while providing greater opportunities for its talented learners.
The College implements its programs of teaching and training to ensure not only academic success but also develop professional and life skills while encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship among its learners.
The College strives for highest standards of excellence in all spheres of its activity. It strategizes for success of its learners, faculty members and alumni by providing opportunities for life-long learning. Effective monitoring and evaluations are integral part of implementation of its various programs with continuous improvement to achieve highest quality standards.
Ruia College practices and demonstrates honesty, fairness, respect, equality and inclusiveness in all its endeavors.
The Institution is responsible in understanding the needs and meeting the needs of its learners, faculty, and other staff. The College makes its programs relevant to the needs of its stake holders and is flexible to meet changing needs of the society, industry, and the nation as a whole.
The administration and management of the Institution hold themselves responsible in being accountable to the future sustainability of Ruia College both academically and financially and in its approach to the needs of humanity and environment.
Areas that require special focus
The College is inclusive in its approach to imparting education and training. With Changing global scenario and to meet contemporary needs of the Society, the College needs to focus on incorporating innovative methods in teaching and training. The College needs to plan for augmenting its IT infrastructure to support IT based teaching like use of virtual classrooms, use of mobiles, internet based knowledge acquisition etc.
The evaluation system is the College is based on 60%:40% where 40% marks are allotted to continuous evaluation of learners based on their performance in the class and also their performance in other methods of evaluations like assignments, projects, class tests, quizzes etc. The College, therefore, stresses on transparency, objectivity and unbiasedness of the evaluation programs. The College needs to incorporate more technology tools especially information technology platforms and Digitization tools to reduce the reliance on human skills. The certification documents need to be tamper- proof with necessary audit trails for future reference and retrieval from archives.
There is a significant gap between the scope of academic training and the needs of the industry. The employability of the students passing out is, therefore, always a concern. Academic programs therefore have started focusing more on developing
Entrepreneurship skills. With the employment scene in our country looking grim, it has become even more significant to train students to be self-employed. The College therefore, needs to focus on development of professional skills and inculcating entrepreneurship attitudes among the students. Areas like ideation, business development, business incubation, Intellectual property etc. have to be given higher priority while designing curricula.
The College has always been nurturing research activities as an integral part of part of academic training. With the implementation of STAR programs, research training has been incorporated as an integral part of undergraduate teaching especially, in the Science faculty. With a sizeable number of research students under its role, the College needs to focus on innovation and generating intellectual property to make research activities more applicative and oriented to needs of the Society and the nation at large.
The College has been recognized as a Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (SIRO) by the Government of India and it offers industrial services in several fields. The industry – academia linkages that the College has established, provides ample opportunities for exposing students to the industrial environs. These linkages are not only a source of supplementary income but also helps in evolving the academic research to become more applicable and more contemporary in nature. The College needs to expand its scope of industrial research and involve a greater number of departments to make the research activities interdisciplinary in nature.
One of important needs of modern education is to make the teaching-training programs to be in sync with the fast-changing scenario of technology and information dissemination. This demands a strategic plan of ensuring continuous training of the faculty members and other staff to make them update with the current areas of knowledge, technology, and other relevant practices.
The College has been making concerted efforts to cater to the all-round development of its learners. In its efforts to make the education holistic, the College has initiated several co-curricular and extra-curricular activities that encourages learnings in soft skills and life-skills. It is important that the academic programs should make the learner sensitized to the societal needs and societal issues so that the learner evolves into a responsible citizen contributing proactively to nation building.
The College is situated at the heart of a megapolis. Being at the midst of a buzzing city like Mumbai, the College faces several constraints especially in space. The Current building regulations of the Municipality puts lot of restrictions on the vertical expansion of the College. With the growing demands of teaching and training, it has become imperative that the College shifts some of its focused activities and programs to an off campus site.
The College, in its last eighty years of existence, has not only evolved into an important Centre of higher education but also has amassed significant expertise and experiences in teaching and training. It is, therefore, important that the College shares its vast experience with other institutions. The College should also share its facilities with other organizations especially those which are less endowed. It is essential to share and synergize the expertise of the College with other institutions especially those that are in areas with lesser facilities and expertise. The College should also extend its activities to the society to widen the scope of its audience and also make its activities directly benefit learners outside its precinct.
The Perspective Plan will provide the direction and guidance needed for the Institution to march ahead to meet the growing needs and aspirations of the society and the nation at large. The Perspective Plan will help the College to make significant contribution to the process of nation building by empowering the youth of the country through its programs and activities.
The following strategies and tasks have been identified to meet the Institutional goals in the next five years (2017- 2022).
2017-18
· The College will initiate actions to augment the Wi-Fi enabled campus and make the Classrooms Tablet-friendly.
· The College will initiate actions to organize regular academic audits at the end of each academic year
2018- 2022
· Make teaching, learning and evaluation as independent of paper as possible (towards paper-free system).
2017-2018
· The College will initiate actions to implement On-Screen-Marking in the evaluation process
· The College will bench-mark itself with the top institutions in the country for its evaluation and certification processes
2018-2022
· The College will digitize the systems of governance, feedback, administration etc.
2017-2018
· To initiate the process of starting post-graduation in skill development courses.
· To design additional skill development modules in other conventional courses.
· To conduct skill development programs as add-on activities along the regular curriculum
· Develop professional ethics amongst the students.
· To collaborate with external experts for encouraging entrepreneurship.
2018-2022
· To set up a centre for research in skill gap analysis.
· To set research in mitigation of skill gaps for various job roles.
Research, Innovation and Intellectual Property
2017-2018
· To undertake programs for initiating more faculty into research.
· To initiate programs to undertake ideation and incubation activities
· To collaborate with external experts in encouraging ideation and innovation
· To utilize the STAR program to involve more UG students in research.
2018-2022
· Set up a centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship.
· To set a coordination cell to augment interdisciplinary research based on the research skills of faculty
2017-2018
· To increase the number of departments involved in industrial services
· To undertake training for faculty in areas related to regulations, especially GST
2018-2022
· To set up more centres within the campus with better availability of sophisticated instruments.
· To increase the industrial client base to be more than 100.
2017-2018
· To undertake workshops for teachers in newer ideas of classroom teaching
· To involve external agencies / institutions for training teachers for innovations in teaching-learning process.
· To undertake a workshop on “Teacher as a Leader “
2018-2022
· To organize faculty development programs in the context of emerging trends in education especially in pedagogy
· To collaborate with external experts and organize programs for professional development of all Heads of Departments and Senior Staff to take up institutional leadership
· To organize workshops and other programs for long-term leadership development amongst faculty
2017-2018
· To undertake focused workshops to promote human values and sensitize students to these values
· To organize talks and activities to improve focus of students especially, slow learners.
· To undertake workshops for sensitizing students in gender equity.
2018-2022
· To collaborate and sign MOUs with external agencies for training students for holistic education.
· To develop a dedicated centre for holistic education that could be imparted along with regular curriculum.
2017-2018
· To formulate a College Development Plan in consultation with the management.
· To review the College Development Plan every year.
2018-2022
To initiate actions with the management to acquire more space for the College at an off-campus site.
· To develop a separate centre for Skill development courses and Post Graduate Courses.
2017-2018
· To provide expertise to the adopted College at Konkan
· To form expert groups with faculty and post-graduate students to undertake teaching training activities at the adopted College.
2018-2022
· To organize customized training programs for the faculty at the adopted College at Konkan
· To adopt one more College, preferably in a remote rural area of Maharashtra.