“We Plan to Work on 25 New Areas”

Rithu Dravid | NT

Bengaluru: Kristu Jayanti College (Autonomous) has completed 25 years of its journey as an institution of higher education. Nestled in the north-eastern sector of Bengaluru, the college has witnessed tremendous growth in terms of student numbers, faculty, courses and infrastructure.

Pricipal Fr. Dr. Augustine George, in an interview with News Trail, highlights the advanced needs of learners and says he would like to go beyond the barriers of traditional models of education by focusing on progressive quality research, innovation and by addressing social issues.

Here are excerpts.

How does it feel to have reached the milestone of the silver jubilee success for the institution?

We are in the 25th year of the institution's progress. The college started with nine students and now we have 12,000 students in the campus. I don’t believe in numbers alone, but look at the education system built over the years.

The kind of culture and ethos we have fostered in students with innate practices and the excellent resources we hold distinguishes us from other institutions.

The value system and the unique culture are very evident in the attitude of our students, faculty members and stakeholders. It is certainly the culture that drives people to come to Kristu Jayanti. We aim at making KJ a university in the coming year.

We have worked to fulfill all the parameters necessary to become a university.

What are your Jubilee plans?

As we celebrate 25 years of the institution, we have also identified 25 areas that we need to work on.

We have to develop advanced knowledge skills and seek new insights in the area of research. This will facilitate our faculty members to work more on development of research. We also have plans to adopt nearby village schools and colleges and help them with quality education.

You said you focus on students having a positive approach to life. With reports of increasing student related issues like suicide, drug abuse, financial problems and other distractions, how do you address such sensitive issues among students?

We have 12,000 students in KJ and fortunately we do not face any such problems to deal with. I attribute this to the kind of approach we have and the culture we imbibe in students.

We do understand the energy levels in these young students and we make sure we channelize them in the best positive way. The students have tremendous opportunities to showcase their creativity, innovations, leadership roles and other talents to channelize their energy constructively.

Parents need to help students choose friends. Students need to be wise enough to distinguish between good and bad. We also have mentorship programmes that help students to deal with emotional, physical, societal, spiritual and religious issues.

For students with troublesome family backgrounds seeking help we have counselors on campus along with a good team of psychologists from our department of Psychology.

Any significant challenges the institution has faced in its journey so far?

More than challenges I must say we have used the opportunities to build this as an institution for higher education.

We have the best faculty members and we invest primarily in teachers and their teaching practices. Research has been our prime area of focus. It is our academic framework and competency and the pedagogical methods we follow that has made KJ occupy a place among the top five colleges in the state.

Even during COVID we managed so well and developed our own Learning Management System (LMS) used in top universities. The challenge was training teachers but saw no such difficulties. Eventually online teaching practices became a norm and made it a part of our education system.

You will be getting the ‘Deemed to be University’ status soon, how challenging is it going to be and what kind of support is the institution looking out for?

The government is keen to see progress in the education sector. Bengaluru has become an education hub and seeing a huge inflow of students from across India and the world over.

The city has a conducive environment that provides multiple opportunities to students not only to study but also work and live here. More freedom must be given to private institutions to function effectively and flourish.

This is the reason for more autonomous colleges seeking to become private universities. We have all the parameters like infrastructure, human resource, student strength, land, academic framework and so on to become a ‘Deemed to be University’ shortly.

We have