Delegates: 1. Dr. TM Pramod Kumar, Principal, JSS College of Pharmacy, Mysore, JSSAHER 2. Dr. H.K. Mamatha, Asst. Professor & Coordinator, DHSMS, JSSAHER. JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research, Mysore had deputed Dr. TM Pramod kumar, Principal, JSS College of Pharmacy, Mysore and Dr. H.K. Mamatha, Coordinator, DHSMS to visit NMIMS, Mumbai, July 24th and 25th 2018. The purpose of the visit was to understand the operational challenges in implementation of M. Pharm plus MBA Pharmacy administration and B.Pharm plus MBA Pharmacy administration (integrated programmes). These two programmes have been successfully implemented at NMIMS for many years and students are benefitted by the dual degree in terms of knowledge as well as placement. The delegation from JSS AHER had an interaction with Dr. Bala Prabhakar, Professor and Dean, College of Pharmacy, NMIMS, Mumbai and also with senior faculty Dr. Saraf, Pharmacy College. Dr. Bala Prabhakar explained about the programme curriculum, syllabus, credits distribution as well as teaching schedule and faculty details for the integrated programme. She also mentioned that the programme is UGC approved and the degree is offered as an integrated programme and is mentioned in the marks card too. The college has appointed management faculty exclusively to teach management subjects for this programme. These faculty have been appointed considering their seniority and experience in Pharma industries. The highlights of the discussion regarding salient features of the college are: 1. The University awards Best teacher, Best researcher during the Convocation. The nomination is voluntary and all applications are evaluated by external committee. 2. Annual appraisals are conducted for faculty through online submission and feedback is collected from students on each faculty every semester, the appraisals are done by external committee. 3. The students can enroll for MOOCs courses and is considered for calculation of credits in their respective programmes 4. Several interdisciplinary courses are offered by each college and there is a separate BoS with representation from different faculty and industry for monitoring these courses. Students can take up these courses and are considered for award of credits. 5. Elective courses are also offered for students in respective programmes. 6. Academic calendar is set for each semester and timetable is prepared to facilitate enrollment of students from different disciplines. The schedule of sports and cultural celebrations are also mentioned in the academic calendar. Convocation dates are also preset. 7. Students have to take up Management Internship Programme (MIP) during their programme in industries which will be carrying credits and considered for award of degree. 8. The project work also has credits and is considered for the award of degree. 9. The curriculum and syllabus are prepared considering the industry expectations and skills required. 10. The library has subscription for reputed journals and e-library is implemented by developing their own SAP module- Manupatra 11. Incentives are provided to faculty for publication and based on the impact factor the incentives are also ranging between 25000 to 2 lakh rupees (IF 1-3: 25K, 3-5:50K, >5: 2 lakh) 12. Similarly, for patents it is 50 thousand rupees. 13. The School of Management has state-of-art infrastructure and facilities for students such as classrooms with smart board, Wi-fi, e-library, finance lab, language lab, cafeteria. 14. The library in the name of “Prof. Y K. Bhushan Information and Knowledge Resource Centre” has subscription for Bloomberg for the Finance lab amounting to Rs. 12 lakh per annum. They also have subscription for Harvard Business Case studies and publications ranging to a tune of Rs. 1.5 crores. 15. Ezproxy software is used for e-access to library resources by faculty and students in any place and at any time and every year a workshop is organized by the librarian during induction to educate the students about the usability of the e-access. 16. The library also has “R” software and simulations are used for teaching supply chain management and marketing management. 17. Turnitin software is used for plagiarism check for research articles and dissertation work and for students Plagcheck is used for their reports. 18. The placements of graduating students are facilitated by the Placement officer in the college. Few other salient features of the university were that most of the activities were centralized such as recruitment, admission, examinations, purchase, maintenance, IT & administrative components, HR training and development, hostel maintenance, security, etc. This is applicable to multiple campuses of NMIMS. The delegates also had interaction with Dr. Meena, Registrar, NMIMS. The visit was very much useful in terms of understanding the requirements for offering the integrated programmes as well as the feasibility of implementing the programme. Few of the best practices observed in the colleges and the University were innovative and provided learning experience to the delegates. The delegates also visited “Imaginarium” a 3D printing organization and interacted with Sri Guruprasad, MD regarding the possibility of including 3D printing in curriculum as well as projects for the benefit of the students and patients. JSSAHER signed an MoU with Imaginarium on 24th July 2018 and this visit helped the delegates to understand the nature of work being done at Imaginarium and to explore the avenues for the collaboration. The delegates were taken around the organization and they could witness the 3D printing work being carried out in the facility. We thank the authorities of JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research for permitting us to make this visit and also providing the financial and logistic support for the visit. We also thank Dr. Meena, Dr. Bala Prabhakar, Dr. Saraf, Mr. Yogesh and Dr. Mayur from NMIMS for coordinating and providing us the necessary information from NMIMS. We thank Sri Guruprasad Rao, MD, Imaginarium for coordinating the visit to Imaginarium.
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