Sunrise Technical Education Promotional Society: Uplifting academia

Dr. Nameesh Miglani, General Secretary

There is no gain saying that HEIs are expected to maintain quality assurance standards by undertaking periodic health check-ups on analogy of maintaining personal health care. Quality being hailed as buzzword, quality assurances which constantly evolve, expand and fine tune its strategies, have become torch bearers to promote best practices, facilitate research and consultancy, and render expert advice and information to various stakeholders.

Besides, in an era of globalized world where competition is taking the prime seat, there is no room for HEIs of dubious quality. On the contrary, a host of universities, autonomous colleges, colleges with potential for excellence etc., are required to fine tune its strategies and methodologies as a going concern for improvement in conformance with its Vision, Mission and Goals to achieve worldwide recognition.

In Indian context, successive Governments have endeavoured to achieve 35% GER with excellence in quality assurance standards. To meet this demand, it is estimated to have at least another 1500 institutions by 2035 for student centric learning driven model education. As a result, during the last about two decades, there has been an explosion of partly bereft technical, professional and management quality institutions.

In order to assist and guide the vast network of HEIs in holistic quality improvements, a group of educationists and researchers pooled their expertise and resources and formed Sunrise Technical Education Promotional Society (STEPS) in 2004. The No profit no loss Society is registered under Societies Registration Act. Having impanelled Principal consultants, senior consultants and consultants from a host of reputed Government institutions/Departments/Universities/Industry,

STEPS provide mentorship to beneficiaries in matters:

• Curricular development
• Establishing new institutions
• Faculty development programs
• Research and development
• Accreditations and Ranking etc.

It has been deputing its expert teams to conduct SWOC analysis and groom the faculty to create in house facility for periodic analysis. One of its core strength is in field of curricular development in formulation, execution and review of PEOs, Cos and PO attainments through different rubric methods. It has also been actively engaged in conducting FDPs and Workshops for the faculty in vast domains such as quality sensitization, pedagogical training, outcome based education etc.

As regard R&D, it facilitates in organizing workshops to inculcate research culture, patent development and RIFD projects. STEPs also mentors in accreditation process by providing inputs in fool proof preparation of documents, reducing gaps to achieve comfortable scores and faculty training to face real time peer team visit. Another inherent strength of the Society lies in assisting potential institutions to establish new institutes by guiding and assisting them in formation of society/trust/company thereby strictly complying with regulatory requirements.

During last 16 years, there has been a phenomenal progress of the society.

STEPS presence is visible in more than 16 States. It has mentored more than 170 institutes in accreditation process. It has facilitated in formation of 5 new universities and 21 institutions. Besides, it has conducted more than 220 FDPs and workshops to about 25000 world class faculty for competing onslaught of market economy.
To conclude, STEPs is committed in its mission of upholding quality enhancement standards and in turn has received greater acceptability and indelible impression of quality assurance from HEIs.

 

Disclaimer: The views, suggestions and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Forbes India journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.