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Sona College of Technology: Creating a Rich pool of Talent

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Sri Thyagu Valliappa,Vice ChairmanTechnology in the education sector has evolved from the quint essential power-point presentations to conducting assessments on the cloud. Gartner has predicted that educational institutes worldwide will spend on technology in excess of $67 billion in 2015 alone. Institutes such as Sona College of Technology are riding this trend through the use of Moodle based learning and evaluation, an in house MIS – Management Information System developed to cater to the needs of the faculty and students and blended MOOC supported by IIT Bombay and Anna Edusat courses to provide further support. “The curriculum of the various programmes at the institute are designed in such a way that it not only imparts knowledge to the students but also helps in developing a talent pool of engineers who are industry-ready,”says Dr. V. Jayaprakash, Principal,Sona College of Technology.

Founded in 1997 Sona has 25 research centers to nurture young minds towards inventions for the betterment of the society. The institution has 100percent placement record, with over 220 companies lining up to recruit students. Some big industrial players that recruit include Accenture Inc,Cognizant Technologies and Essar Steels. With big names from the corporate world coming in for campus recruitment the institution understands the importance of training that helps the students become corporate ready. Hence, they have a training cell where they prepare the students for the
interviews.

The training cell conducts mock interviews, aptitude tests and also helps the students with the process of resume building. All the activities in the training cell are focused on recognizing the core competencies in the students and helping them nurture it.

Apart from making the students industry ready, the curriculum of the college is created keeping in mind the requirements of the students


Apart from making the students industry ready, the curriculum of the college is created keeping in mind the requirements of the students. The curriculum is fashioned in a way that the students get exposed to the outer or the work environment before they graduate. The college offers more than 20 courses from U.G to PhD. The faculty of the college is recruited on the basis of AICTE norms. The college focuses on framing their pedagogy based on the industrial requirements.With over 70 PhD holders, the faculty ratio is 1:13, which helps them ensure every student learns exactly what is required from them, once they graduate. Today, every department in the college has members from the government,industry and alumni on its board of studies (BOS), whose responsibility isto meet once a year to update or alter the syllabus according to the needs of the industry.

The engineering college also provides class counselors and faculty advisors to the students. The counselors and advisers help students with the overall development and act as their mentors to guide them with their research and studies. The institution also manages an in-house management information system which caters to the
needs of faculty and the students. They also utilize various massive open online courses to make the concepts clear.

Sona college of Technology also has undeterred focus on research and development. The institution flaunts its research and development centres with 33 R&D centres. The college is proud of the many patents filed and publications made by the scholars and the students so far. Research work /carried out in the college is often highlighted because of their various successes. There are many sponsored research projects going on in the institutions research centres. All the projects are funded by external funding agencies like AICTE /DST/IGCAR/ ISRO and Industries.

Their R&D programs have won many awards, recent ones were ICTACT Student Innovator 2014,Accenture Innovation Jockey, and SAE SUPRA Race Car Design. The institute has also won “Edupreneurs Award” from MHRD, New Delhi, for Emerging Global Destination for education,is also the proud recipient of the "AICTE – CII Award for Best Industry – Linked Technical Institute in India" and has an acclaimed 'A' grade by 'NAAC'.

Apart from academic activities,Sonata, Sonaria, Tamil Mandram and sonatsav are the fests that are organized in the campus every year. The students organise socially responsible activities through their clubs on a regular basis. They are encouraged to participate in as many clubs and activities as possible for their overall development. The college is all set to put extra effort in achieving its goals and taking the institute one step forward. Having students coming in from all over the globe and being one among the few institutions to get an approval for foreign admissions in engineering in India, they are becoming
one of the most preferred colleges in Tamil Nadu.