Future Of The Engineering Faculty At Oluvil
Dr. Aboobacker Rameez
The Future of the Engineering Faculty of South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, Oluvil
I am writing in reference to a recent article appearing in Colombo Telegraph on the 27th November, 2015, entitled “Minister Kiriella: Engineering At Oluvil To Be Closed And Students Shifted”. I felt that this article was inimical not only to all those students pursing their studies at the university, but also to all those who have been working there as part of the university community. It seriously dents the image of the university.
I believe that some of the concerns of the Engineering students of SEUSL/Oluvil are valid. Nevertheless, their demands and reactions are unreasonable and disproportionate.
New faculties and new university do encounter challenges at the outset
It is common that new faculties or universities, when they are first established, encounter numerous challenges in terms of lack of physical and human resources. I know of a medical faculty in a university in the Eastern Province, when it was founded in 2005, was faced with a lot of challenges. It had only one consultant and a PhD holder. The rest of the teaching staff, all, had only undergraduate degrees. This predictably caused a lot of hue and cry from the students and parents. Nevertheless, this medical faculty continued to operate under these difficult circumstances for a few more years before the situation began to improve and completely changed for better. At present, this medical faculty is equipped with over ten consultants with either post-graduate or doctoral degrees. Its students are now fully satisfied. The same was also the case when the Engineering Faculty was first established in another University in 1997.
The Engineering Faculty of South Eastern University has now got fifteen academic staff. Of them, five are senior lecturers. Three of them hold doctoral degrees, and another three graduate degrees. Those with undergraduate degrees are reading for their masters in various reputed universities. The quality and quantity of the teaching staff are expected to improve fast. The new incentive offered by the UGC recently, in a circular, to senior academic staff working at the Engineering Faculties of other universities but are willing to move to the SEU is a great move in the right direction. There is also the likelihood of a coordinator being appointed to oversee visits by the visiting lecturers from other universities. There are a lot of positive steps being taken. Therefore, it is important that students take note of all these positive developments before they engage in any activism.
Updated Curriculum
I learn that the curriculum of the faculty was designed by a team of prominent consultants, numbering over twenty from Moratuwa, Peradeniya, Open and Ruhuna Universities; and that it is on par with curricula in world-class Engineering universities. A delegation, which included the State Minister of Higher Education and a Senior Professor of engineering, recently visited the university to look into the issue at hand. It was fully satisfied with the curriculum of the faculty. Criticism about the quality of the curriculum seem to have no sound basis.
