Prof. Ajay Shrivastava is presently working as Head – Corporate Training and Placement at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bhopal. With extensive experience in industry, administration, teaching, research, and entrepreneurship development, he has worked in many state and national level institutions and government departments like MP. Industries Dept., CRISP, MPCON, DST-GOI, etc. having coordinated many national seminars and conferences, and 50+ start-up events, Prof. Shrivastava has won a number of national prizes and awards including Best Training & Placement Officer in India for Industrial Collaboration by Global Talent Track in 2020. 

IIIT Bhopal

What are your roles and responsibility towards the students?

“Enhanced placement opportunities with training and development”

As the head of the Career Development & Training, every student is my responsibility, regardless of the field in which he/she wishes to excel or whether it’s under the academic system or in the outside world. My main responsibility is to identify training and development needs for the students with hands-on experiences, planning, organization and overseeing appropriate training in accordance with their future perspectives. I interact with corporations to understand their required skill sets on a regular basis. On the basis of industry feedback, I arrange industry-oriented training for my students. I also connect my students with industry experts that help us maintain perfect training and monitor the quality of training and performance of students.

How do you try to bring in an industry-oriented approach towards subjects?

“Maintaining best practical practices in alliance with industrial expertise”

Hands-on experience is very much important if a person wishes to have expertise in the required field. It overall boosts up confidence and gives clarity about the work we wish to explore ourselves into. We connect our students with corporate via corporate talks, expert talks, webinars, seminars, expert talks, technical contests, and events on upcoming technologies to make sure they are industry-ready with good knowledge of their stream. We have tie-ups with the best industries and companies who offer training and internships to our students in institute premises itself. 

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How do you strategize the curriculum to make it befitting for the students? 

“Professional learning approaches and industry based designing”

We make sure that the curriculum supports the ‘Communities Establish Collaborative’ team learning with every sector covered and to provide students with a deep knowledge of the stream. We frequently update the curriculum for the developing learning targets and the daily assessments, and provide personalized learning to all the students. In our curriculum, we make sure that the assessment analysis and data-based decision-making is done appropriately thus making sure of the continuous development of the prospectus. We are also taking feedback from the industries for their required skill sets, so that we can prepare our design for our students’ training curriculum. 

How do you enhance the skills of the students to expose them to real- world challenges? 

“Industrial layout and student developmental programs”

To have a skill and application-based approach towards life, it is very important to give industry exposure to the students. We have field visits, daily workshops, and events to enable our students to develop required skills with good practical knowledge. Healthy competition is being carried out to help students learn about their skills and weaknesses so they can work on them. We do teach them to practice more on real-world research instead of staying in the comfort zone. Moreover, they connect with industry experts which give them extensive knowledge and simulate a real-world experience. We are also arranging SDP for students and expert talks to upgrade their technical skills. 

How does your college enhance the skill of the faculties?

“Training and orientation of faculty on a regular basis”

Regular training is being scheduled for both tech and non-tech backgrounds to prepare them according to the outside world. Workshops and field visits are being organized to help them get a good exposure of changing marketing trends. We are arranging Faculty development programmes, seminar & webinars and industry based expert talks on regular intervals to enhance the technical expertise of our faculties.

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What would be your valuable advice to the students?

“Engage in your journey as much as you can”

Make yourself as productive as you can. Read, go for innovative ideas, switch to entrepreneurship/start-ups or get expertise in technology; do whatever you love to do in your own way. Seek for leadership, counselling if you are stuck somewhere but do not stop yourself at a place. Learn the value of networking and team building.