Chitkara University- Re-Inventing Education 4.0

Chitkara University

Enabling Future Leaders Explore their Potential

It was in 2002 that Chitkara Educational Trust established its Punjab campus, near Chandigarh, on the Chandigarh-Patiala National Highway. In the year 2010, this campus became Chitkara University, a private University established through an Act by the Punjab State Legislature.

When a University is founded by two passionate teachers with over four decades of experience in grooming students, it gets reflected in their final products. The efforts of Dr Ashok K Chitkara and Dr Madhu Chitkara have made Chitkara University reach on top in placements for nearly a decade now. Since the last few years, Chitkara University based in Punjab & Himachal Pradesh have pioneered start-up incubation with outstanding results. Two of the incubated projects bagged top rankings in an International competition for start-ups across UK, China and India, recently. Chitkara University is also home to one of the largest portfolio of innovative courses in diverse fields.

Any world-class University is not only known for its holistic but also for its productive interventions into the world around it. Great Universities pursue this path because any University can produce a job aspirant whereas it takes a dynamic and a diverse University to create a true leader in any field. Chitkara University which aspires to be world-class in everything it does has been supporting all such social interventions, so that it creates leaders and not just followers.

Chitkara Education brings with it a reputation that has been earned through years of serving the career needs of the student community. Chitkara University graduates go on to make great careers, as they have hands-on experience in their respective fields.

Within a decade, most of the Chitkara University academic programs have been recognised and ranked among the top 50 programs in the country which speaks volumes about their string academic heritage, highly committed faculty, extensive industry collaborations, great International relations, and State of the Art campus facilities. Recently, Chitkara hosted State Youth Parliament 2019, organized by the NSS Department in collaboration with the Regional Directorate Office, Chandigarh. The main objective of National Youth Parliament Festival 2019 is to hear the voice of Indian youth between 18 to 25 years of age, who are allowed to vote but cannot stand as a candidate for elections, through deliberations in Youth Parliament at different levels.

With engineering education being a major thrust area for Chitkara University, it has always been working diligently to better its own Engineering Programs, as well as to support National and International initiatives. Recently, Chitkara University hosted the prestigious ICTIEE 2019 (The International Conference on Transformation in Engineering Education), at their Punjab Campus.

Chitkara University in association with Indo Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) has been continuously working to improve Engineering Education Ecosystem in India. Its objective is to improve the quality and global relevance of Engineering Education in India.

The well-attended conference included keynote sessions, panel discussions and workshops by experts around the world. An important part of the conference was presentations by renowned Engineering faculty who already have great experience in transforming their own curriculum, classrooms and programs.

The conference was attended by some of the world-renowned Engineering Educators and Practitioners like Dr. Michael Milligan (CEO, ABET), Dr. Hans Hoyer (President, IFEES), Dr. Stephanie Farrell (Rowan University), B. Ramkrishna (Director, NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program), Dr. Rao Vemuri (University of California), Dr. Lueny Morell (InnovaHiED, USA), and many more.

Chitkara University also promotes the well-being and achievements of school going as well as college going students. It extends the same beyond its own student community too. Recently, Chitkara University in collaboration with RoboChamps, Chhapai.com and RoboGenie, conducted International School Awards, the world’s largest education conference and award show in Dubai. And most interestingly, Chitkara University alumni Akshay Ahuja is the Co-founder of RoboChamps India and RoboGenie.

The event witnessed participation from 500 representatives from educational institutions of 20 different countries. A total of 180 schools and educators took home the awards in various categories, which had received over 12,000 nominations. A first-of-its-kind Educational event on a Global scale, International School Awards, served as a platform to brainstorm and recognize excellence, and transformational approaches in the field of education.

However, Chitkara’s social interventions for the benefit of its students are most impactful in the start-up sphere. Universities today cannot afford to ignore entrepreneurship development and start-up incubation, given the high momentum start-ups have achieved in India. While most private universities worth their names have started start-up promotion cells, very few have fully operational Incubation Centres.

Even for Private Universities with their own Incubation Centres, it is an uphill task for delivering the promised, as unlike degrees and placements; start-ups do not become successful with hard work alone. It calls for brilliant ideas, the right enabling ecosystem and real entrepreneurial brains that can be utilised productively.

Chitkara University recently achieved significant acknowledgment in International start-up domain. The University incubation initiatives, named Chitkara University Research and Innovation Network (CURIN) and the Chandigarh based Chitkara Innovation Incubator, are the places where its researchers, faculty and aspiring student entrepreneurs work across various disciplines to extend the boundaries of knowledge so that their projects can be executed.

An event titled Ingenuity-2018 Innovation Challenge was hosted by a UK based University, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China where Chitkara University participated as a competitor from India along with China and United Kingdom. While only a select group of 17 teams from these three nations got to participate in this high- profile event, Chitkara University could send four teams, in association with the public facility, Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC). Ingenuity 2018 Innovation Challenge has several tiers of winners. Out of the 17 teams, only top 10 teams got an Exclusive International Pass for having swift business establishment with local government support in China and in the UK. The top 6 among them will be co-founded in India, China and the UK.

Two teams from Chitkara University, could make it to this category. Chitkara University’s project, a farm engineering start-up called MOKSH bagged the First position and a Gold medal among all 17 International projects. The winning USP of MOKSH was the global importance of an innovative idea that simplifies the life of a farmer’s post-harvest and helps them earn more from crop waste. MOKSH is headed by its Founder Dr. Nitin Saluja, an entrepreneur from the Chitkara Innovation Incubator, Chandigarh.

The second winning project from Chitkara University was DAT, an incubated company which makes Braille Education for the blind easy across the globe. It was declared as the ‘Best International Project’ at the event. They won 10,000 UK pounds by Hayden Green Foundation, UK.

E-Braille Slate is a project devised by DAT for making education for the blind painless and comfortable. The project, under the supervision of Chitkara University Centre for Research and Innovation (CURIN), has a high international relevance as it addresses millions of people with blindness. This project was especially applauded by the Jury and the present audience.

Such achievements by students of Chitkara University can be traced back to the passion of its founders. The University has been founded by Dr. Ashok K Chitkara and Dr. Madhu Chitkara who have been passionate teachers for more than 40 years now. As Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor respectively, they are not just founders but hands-on leaders at the campus. This continuous support and presence have proven to be a major edge in the field of education and hence the Chitkara Educational Trust.

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