April, 2019: At the ASU GSV (Arizona State University/Global Silicon Valley) education summit in San Diego, SRM AP VC Jamshed Bharucha and Minerva’s Ben Nelson (serving on a panel entitled ‘Practical Solutions for Major Reform in Higher Education’) announced that the enhanced Minerva Forum will be offered to SRM AP’s students in the engineering and liberal arts. Ben Nelson explained how the scalable Forum platform improves educational outcomes for classes up to 400 students.

Built upon seven years of development and decades of research into the science of learning, Minerva’s education system includes its pedagogy, intentionally scaffolded curriculum design, and proprietary Forum learning environment, designed to offer fully active learning classes in real time.

Ben Nelson, founder and CEO of Minerva pointed out that the system was designed with the specific goal of advancing the intellectual development of each student.

For SRM AP, the immediate benefit in adopting this platform – an intensive active-learning pedagogy using interactive technology – is that it establishes a stronger foundation in basic competencies like Expressive Clarity and Critical/Creative Thinking and Communication as well as other foundation courses. Subsequently, these fundamental cognitive processes will be extended onto courses across the curriculum.

SRM AP LEADERSHIP AT ASU GSV

Started in 2010 with a collaboration between Arizona State University and Global Silicon Valley (GSV), the annual summit focusses on learning and career outcomes.  ASU GSV is regarded as the world’s leading education and workforce innovation summit. Also, at the summit this year, Nicholas Dirks, member of SRM AP Board of Governors and Honorary Pro Chancellor, served on a panel – The Coddling of the American Mind: Are Good Intentions Setting Up a Generation for Failure? Nicholas Dirks also gave a talk entitled StarTrek: The Global Context for the Reimagination of Education.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2019/04/08/minervas-innovative-platform-makes-high-quality-higher-ed-personal-and-affordable/#bad47455742a

At the recent College Board’s ‘India Global Higher Education Alliance’ symposium in Bangalore, SRM AP Director, Admissions Rupesh Bisht received the membership plaque from Linda Liu, Vice President, International, The College Board – the US based institution behind the SAT.

With this membership SRM AP joins a distinguished group of institutions in India and abroad (including Ashoka University, Columbia University and University of Cambridge) in adopting the SAT as a benchmark in the admissions processes.  “As a founding member of the India Global Higher Education Alliance we will collectively shape the agenda of inclusivity and access to high quality higher education in India, says Rupesh Bisht.  “SAT scores have proven predictive validity of student performance and we intend to use these as an admissions criterion in addition to our SRMJEEE test.”

At this event, leaders from the Alliance’s member universities gathered with prominent experts from the World Bank, Brookings India, Manipal Education Group and the Consortium for Higher Education Research in Asia (CHERA) to foster collaboration and the sharing of global best practices to advance access and excellence in higher education.

Some of the initiatives discussed: providing high quality education at the scale needed to meet India’s demands, increasing autonomy at leading universities, connecting university researchers to India’s national laboratories, the need to shift away from lecture-based classes to more project-based coursework and a call for institutions to put students at the top of their priority list.

https://international.collegeboard.org/india-global-alliance

https://www.collegeboard.org/

Pitchathon 2k19 – a 24-hour entrepreneurial journey with a big result!

Ennovab, SRM AP’s entrepreneurial innovation lab launched the first 24-hour business plan competition that went from founders speed dating (complete strangers in insightful conversations) to rigorous brainstorming, to five groups of fifty students with common problems running market research, prototyping, punching out financial models – to the final pitch.

An IPS based Attendance System (an idea proposed by five first year students Prannoy Tuggiti, Manoj Manike, Moin Syed,  Prabhu Avula, and Anvesh Reddyh) was awarded the first prize by a distinguished panel of judges (T. Ragunathan, Head of Computer Science and Engineering with 25 years in database systems; Dr. Srabani Basu, professor at Career Development Centre and former senior corporate trainer at Addeco India;  and Dr. Marc Howard Rich, professor of  English and Journalism, and former lecturer at Christopher Newport University)

The IPS based attendance system is a mobile application that enables students to mark attendance – one student per app. Of course, it works only if their location (determined by IPS, the Indoor Positioning System) is detected to be inside the stipulated class!

The first runner up team (Jaideep Cherukuri, Yash tripathi,  Bhavana Yedlapalli, Krishna, Abhishree Sai) proposed a real-time ETA system for autos so SRMites located in the middle of nowhere can make quick getaways!

While the 2^nd runner up team of Rahul Gupta, Ruthwik Reddy, Dileep Patted, Arumilli Nikitha and Poorna Sai proposed a Smart ID card that can be used instead of paper coupons in places like the canteen and library.

To join future events follow @ennovab on Instagram.

This year SRM AP introduces Data Science for all students in the School of Liberal Arts and Basic Sciences (SLABS). Supported by intellectual capital of colleagues at the University of California- Berkeley, SRM AP’s Data Science course comprises lectures and labs that encourage discussion as students get comfortable in simple programming using Python.

“Recognizing that data science is an essential building block for critical applications of today and the future we are offering it as a foundation course for all SLABS students”, says SLABS Associate Dean, Dr. Shailender Swaminathan.

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