UPES Enlists Top-notch Faculty for Scholastic Excellence

The higher education landscape continues to evolve through new programmes and instructional improvements, and the revolutionary impact of technology. However, faculty remains central to academic excellence and positive student outcomes.

At UPES the learning environment is forward-looking and future-driven, and its graduates are ready to face the challenges of their chosen vocation. In keeping with a philosophy of student-centric academic systems, UPES continually addresses the teaching and learning environment and the curriculum it offers. The physical facilities available at its campus, and the EdTech platforms are keeping with modern higher education institutions anywhere in the world and are continually upgraded to meet the demands of the 21st century learning requirements.

Going forward as an institution of higher learning UPES is working towards becoming one of the leading universities and an intellectual thought leader in India and Southeast Asia. To enable this, the focus is on the recruitment of faculty from top institutions across the world, including 7 Fulbright, 4 Commonwealth and 3 Chevening Scholars, as well as those from top Indian institutions.

Dr. Ram Sharma has been a Chevening Gurukul Fellow at the University of Oxford, with 15 years of experience in higher education policy, university administration, online education, especially the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and internationalization of higher education.

Nalin Mehta, Dean, School of Modern Media, is an award-winning social scientist, journalist and author who has held senior leadership positions in Indian digital, print and TV news companies.

Prof. Gurvinder Singh Virk, Dean, School of Engineering, has studied Electronic & Electrical Engineering from The University of Manchester and did PhD and DIC, Control Theory from Imperial College, London. He is highly inclined towards robotics and its application.

Prof. Priyadarsan Patra, Dean, School of Computer Science, is an accomplished scientist and technologist. Prof. Patra is an alumnus of Texas University, USA. He did M.S in Computer & Information Sciences from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA, USA.

Mr. S Senthil Kumar holds a master’s degree in Aviation Safety and Human Factors from Cranfield University, London (UK) with 12 years of experience.

Mr. Suhail Rashid Bhat is an L.L.M. in Human Rights Conflict and Justice degree holder from SOAS University of London.

Ms. Sakshi Bathla, Assistant Professor, School of Business, is an alumna of the Delhi School of Economics and a Commonwealth scholar.

Mr.Gaurav Misra, University of Montana; Mr. Ritam Dutta, Indiana University, Bloomington; Mr. Akarsh Verma, Pennsylvania State University; and Ms. Devaleena Kundu, University of California, Berkeley; are some of the scholars to name a few. Development, training and upskilling of faculty is an inherent part of the pedagogic growth culture of UPES. Keeping the meta-learning needs of the 21st century global citizen in perspective, faculty are offered training and development in subject skills, higher education, and professional development. An 11-month PG Certification in Academic Practice; Online courses through edX and Coursera; workshops on IPR, research methodology, publishing, scientific writing and research grant writing; workshops, training, and webinars; 200+ master-classes have been some of the institutional initiatives undertaken in the past year. Apart from teaching, learning and assessment, pedagogic practices at UPES encourage co-teaching, professional development portfolios for reflective teaching practices, and sharing of best practices through peer observation techniques.

The teaching, learning and assessment strategy at UPES is student centric and inquiry driven. Traditional classroom learning combines seamlessly with online platforms and LMS to create a learning system that is adaptable and encourages a flexible learning methodology for developing lifelong learners. This system has the agility to adapt to any given learning space and continues to be experienced by our students due to the closure of the campus on account of the pandemic. Faculty and students engage with each other through synchronous and asynchronous methods comfortably and the learning continues, transcending time and space.