A Responsible, Organic and Vibrant Campus Culture - A Signature Created at IITBBS

Actually, the campus life of students was started at IITBBS campus from July 2015. Being conscious about the present cultural scenario, Prof Raja Kumar personally took several important and conscious pre-designed measures to see that a healthy (physical and mental), constructive and vibrant student life that would shape in to very responsible proactive individuals, is developed and maintained at the institute. Traditional time-tested Indian concepts like character building. cultural enrichment and personality development have been given importance to prevail and the good practices such as ‘early to bed and early to rise’ a chance by choice. With night hanging out and the tendency of adopting western lifestyle becoming default characteristics of student culture predominantly despite their drawbacks, everywhere, it needed a strong courage to attempt implementing the relevant characteristics of traditional models. The administration did not hesitate to even take some measures which may be like a bitter pill on the surface of it and may carry the associated risk of being not liked by students in the first instance. But by proper design, prior appraisal to students and the diligence that was exercised in its sincere implementation have resulted in to wide acceptance. yielded very remarkable results and the campus grew to proudly project its unique signature character very exceptionally, by the time Prof Kumar relinquished the position of Director in April 2022. The model deserves a special consideration in the modern times that pose a lot complexities and threats to students.

The important ones of the signature characteristics that was pre-planned, designed, and implemented successfully yielding beneficial and positive results are described here, as follows:

• Very Exceptional Academic Standards: Due to the adoption of very serious accountability measures and rewarding of teaching excellence, there had been unbelievable improvement that took place in the standards and student satisfaction level. which was glaringly visible in the steep rise in the rating (at the exit feedback) by the students for teaching at IITBBS within the first two years of assuming charge by Prof Kumar as director and it was sustained very successfully, thereafter too. In view of these efforts, the institute could consciously aim high and offered uncompromised and very resilient education even during the Covid pandemic. Thus, on the academic standards, the institute could rise to unparalleled levels in the IIT system. He says , good standards of academics that gives the confidence, satisfaction and fulfillment to students and also to the faculty and staff is an essential prerequisite for developing the feeling of well-being at the institute.
  
  Prof Kumar says with confidence that whatever the ranking systems may say, in the standards of education and empowerment of students is the best in the country. For details on how best of education was provided with a strong resolve one may refer to:
  
  Uncompromised Academics during the Covid Pandemic - Unparalleled in the Country
• Exceptional ‘Sports Are for All’ Culture and Digital Detoxification: Though it took a lot of efforts and perseverance, a very robust culture where a large percentage of the institute students participate in sports and other positive activities was established with the willful participation of students. A visitor to the campus will find a very exceptionally larger number of students coming out and playing in the sports fields than in senior IIT’s (this is despite that their total student strength itself is 4-5 times that of IITBBS), a very remarkable achievement. Similar is the case with socio-cultural functions, too. Though it took a lot of efforts from the institute administration at the beginning also very significantly after the 1st and 2nd waves of Covid, the culture got caught on by the end of 2021 and it has been going, very pleasantly in a sustained way without calling for any administrative interventions. It is needless to mention that participation of almost all students in the activities ensures Digital Detoxification by default and makes it an inbuilt mechanism.
• Rejuvenation-cum-Orientation Programme for Fresers: At IITBBS a Rejuvenation-cum-orientation programme was personally designed by Prof Raja Kumar to help rejuvenating the freshly admitted first year BTech students from the ill effects of the prevailing unhealthy practices in the JEE coaching culture and to reclaim them back. This programme served the objective very well and has immensely improved the situation. On reclaiming the side tracked students too, IITBBS became a strong exception amongst the institutes. It has been more effective than the typical Induction programmes conducted elsewhere.
• Bi-cycle Culture: During the Phase-1 infrastructure planning, IITBBS was designed to be a distributed campus and in view of its advantages, and the distributed model was maintained even during the reworking of the master plan for Phase-2. A good bi-cycle culture was established in the campus which got added to the physical exercise due to the sports activity and as a result, the students of IITBBS exhibited good reflexes. Prof Raja Kumar fondly recalls the one and only, half-day boycotting of classes by the students, when the cycle culture was fully introduced in the campus. Later the students regretfully acknowledged that it was uncalled for and willfully accepted the culture and got immensely benefitted by the same.
• Excellent General Health in the Campus: In view of the remote nature of the campus, Prof Kumar was keen and the institute created a health center with efficient round the clock availability of a doctor from day one. The campus and its general health culture were maintained at high standards and as a result, the percentage of daily cases reported in the health center and the hospitalization cases have been very exceptionally low clearly indicating that the campus has been maintained exceptionally healthy.
• Student Management of Activities: Full freedom has been given to the student council to use the 42-acre sports area and the other facilities, full support has been given to them, all the sports and socio-cultural events have been put in their hands and they have been encouraged to completely organize the events in high standards ensuring very high level of participation of students. In addition, a short visit to the play fields by the director or at least a passing by to see the students in action could serve as a direct encouragement to the student council members in particular and the students in general. This action by director also added to the sense of a special significance to the functioning and performance of the council members, concerned institute functionaries and staff.
• Minimization of Night Hangouts and Late Night Functioning: Most of the institutional celebrations have been ensured to end by around 10.30pm and the personal celebrations too have been encouraged to be limited to the same time frame. Late night celebrations have been kept under control and exceptionally low. Certainly, with some exceptions, regular and unnecessary night outs and excess hanging outs in the eateries by students have been controlled through awareness programmes and the conscious will of the students without affecting the fun and celebration component of the events. The systems had in-built exceptions to ensure trouble free functioning for the needy. This has resulted into successfully setting up an academic culture where the absenteeism in morning classes to almost zero, at IITBBS. Students have been the main beneficiaries of this discipline.
  
  In view of the prevailing practices at similar other institutes, occasionally a request for permitting unrestricted movement to outside places beyond midnight may come up from a small set of people. It is hoped that the institute will continue this good practice with an exceptional willful support from the large body of students.
• A Very Deterministic Approach to Maintain the Campus, Drug-free: The campus administration never allowed substance abuse in the campus. Furthermore, due to a lot of precautionary measures taken and aggressive ensuring of police interventions at even places far off from the campus including at other institutions in an exceptional way by the IITBBS administration, it could be ensured that the institute campus could be maintained completely free from substance abuse, alcoholism and addiction In fact, the substance abuse was not permitted to enter the surroundings too. Prof Kumar hopes for sustenance of the same in future too.
• Suicide-free Campus: Due to a very positive and wellness aura maintained across the campus, there have been no cases of suicide till now from 2015. The aura created is expected to spread its positive effect for times to come.
• A Very Responsible Functioning to Ensure Safety and No Unnatural Loss of Life in the Campus: An exceptionally responsible, self – discipline was promoted to ensure safety of the campsites in the campus including the roads. Right protocols were designed for vehicle movements including the contract agencies of the construction work and strict adherence was ensured. Outstandingly and very exceptionally, the campus had no loss of life due to road accidents, disasters and the pandemic, from day one in July 2015 till April 2022, when Prof Kumar relinquished the assignment, despite that 80% of the campus seen today, was built during this time. All inclusive, except for only one fatal fall of a student by accident in the atrium of his hostel wing, the campus had no loss of life.
  
  A lot of efforts were put to see that the PMC and the construction agencies follow safety norms and ensure accident free functioning at the constructions sites. Facilities of the health center were extended to entertain cases from the construction workers as well. The center of the institute was strongly instructed to first attend to the serious cases to avoid loss of life, before ensuring the formalities.
• Mandatory Yoga: Yoga was made mandatory for every student at the first year level, training has been extended to any campsite and the facilities have been made accessible to all to ensure physical and mental well-being of the campsites.
• Clean and Tidy Campus: Due to the exceptionally conscious and well-planned efforts, possibly IITBBS is the cleanest amongst all the IIT’s, it has a very bright and green ambiance giving positive thoughts and encouraging creativity.
• Millet and Organic Food Culture: Prof Kumar was keen and development of a millet culture was initiated with serving of a weekly millet item in hostels, to start with. He intervened, personally drafted the inclusion of clauses on promotion of millet and organic food items to ensure their availability in the conditions for agreement to be executed by the market outlets and food outlets.
• Unrest-free Campus: There has been no unrest or agitation of any sort in the campus from either the students or staff or the faculty with a very rare exception to half day boycotting of classes at the time of introducing the bi-cycle culture, which was later regretted by students.
• Accountability of Functionaries: Continuous monitoring, accountability, recognition and rewarding of efficient functioning have ensured very efficient operation of the institutional systems and services. Due to continuous monitoring at different levels and particularly from the top at Director’s level and implementation of high degree of accountability, all the systems and services of the institute functioned very efficiently at high standards contributing very significantly to the vibrancy and feeling of wellbeing of the campsites.
• Vaccination of All for Covid Protection: For the entire campus including the students, faculty members, staff, their families and outsourced staff, Covid vaccination was arranged and done free of cost at the earliest opportunity with the help of the central and state governments. The campsites were very well protected through extremely well defined and implemented SoP’s, monitoring, healthcare and sanitization in high standards. Daily reports on the parameters of the small number of Covid infected candidates to the director and director’s queries on the parameters itself indicates how seriously the system functioned.
  
  A Unique Exceptional Protection During the Covid-19 Pandemic
• Welfare Measures: The institute was ahead on welfare measures like vaccination, arranging exchanges of currency during demonetization, running a comfortable bus service for commuting to and from city etc.,
• Inclusive Engagement of Campsites in Activities: Very serious efforts were put by Prof Kumar towards campus wide inclusivity and inclusive engagement of students, staff, faculty, their families and campus children in the various activities in order to create a great campus culture which yielded very significant results.
  
  For details, please refer to (Vibrant Outreach for Direct Benefit to the Society) - Chandra, link it from here!
• Excellent Cooperation Received from Students: When the director personally addressed and explained the objective of the actions in detail to the student councils, continually, making them understand, he received tremendous support from them. There were only rare requests made by students to the dean (student affairs, wardens and gymkhana presidents) to let them out freely to move out of the campus after the first wave of Covid and to permit unrestricted movement to outside places for night hangouts. But they did understand the deep and genuine concerns of the administration, going by the level of responsibility taken by it related to student welfare, permitting the students to stay on campus during the pandemic and ensuring their protection, ensuring of the physical and mental health students at challenging standards, ‘no entry for substance-abuse’ standards adopted by the institute etc., the students understood and became whole-hearted participants in the endeavor. It is needless to mention that such extraordinary protection, safety and flexibility to students would not come for free without some willful and conscious control mechanisms put in place. When majority of the institutes asked the students to vacate hostels during the onset of the pandemic, elsewhere, IITBBS permitted the students to stay on the campus instead of exposing themselves to airports, train stations, journeys, etc., and took a full care of them with protection. It is needless to mention that such outstanding responsibility levels come only with associated risks which can be put at bay only with systems that ensure higher level of protection standards.
  
  On many of the exceptional achievements on the student culture front, it is the cooperation and help of student council which has been responsible for the successes. The way they helped in bringing more and more students to come out in the evenings to participate in the events is very commendable and as a result, IITBBS could do it very effectively and exceptionally at many folds more than the other institutes.
• Unfazed by Attempts from Negative Elements: It is needless to mention that our society has a small section of mediocre negative elements who are afraid of high standards. It has been noticed that in any system, a very small fraction of them resort to fake and fabricated means in fake names to discourage the rising standards. Some of the fore-mentioned outstanding student welfare mechanisms gave such people an opportunity to create and spread misleading and fake stories and write to the high offices in our country to discourage the institute administration. They also resorted to tarnish the image of the director through media.
  
  In one such attempts, the negative elements even create 40-50 fake Facebook accounts posing as students and tried to plant negative seed stories in the student groups to persuade the students to join the activity. All such gutless efforts failed miserably due to their fake nature and awareness among the students on the drive with which the director functioned for student welfare and cause. The attempts to get fake and negative stories published too miserably failed.
  
  None of these attempts ever disturbed the director or his associates even by a miniscule, the good work was continued and in turn the institute handed over the miscreant’s works to Odisha Police and continued their good work.
  
  Only when the director relinquished his position at IITBBS, perhaps they paid heavily, they could manage two unethical papers of low standing to publish a fake and fabricated story about director. They took a rare incident of a nominal fine levied by the wardens on a few students for indiscipline, magnified the amount as well as the number by 5 times each and published stating that director did it. When the number of faculty members selected from AP and Telangana was a usual 15-18%, these papers wrote that 70% were selected from these states trying to paint regional bias on the director. All the media being ethical and respectable newspapers understood the absurdity of the numbers and the content, realized that it was fake did not even entertain it.
  
  The moral of the story is that ’nothing comes for free’ and even the success from social service (though it is extremely positive, aggressive and totally selfless) rendered purely for the benefit of the society is not an exception and one should be prepared to take some risks and pay a price.

In short, the biggest achievement of all of the above mentioned very responsible and challenging actions taken is that the IITBBS campus is a wellness and extremely responsible and vibrant campus, and it is an unparalleled signature in the country.

Acknowledgements: Prof Kumar places on record the appreciation with gratitude for the exceptional services rendered by Prof V R Pedireddi, former dean (student affairs), Prof P R Sahu (dean, academics), Dr Srinivas Bhaskar Karanki, President Gymkhana, Dr Sankarsan, Dr Santanu Pal, Chief Warden, Dr Mihir K Das, the wardens, Prof K Satyam, Dr M A Khan, the CMO and the other staff of the health center, Dr Gagandeep Kaur, student counselor, Lt Cdr Raj Kumar, CSO, Mr Tapan K Mohapatra, ASO and other former deans and staff without whose support such implementation of such extraordinary systems would not have been possible.

The tremendous support rendered by the director’s staff, Mr K Sai Kiran, Mr P Girish, Mr S N Patra, Ms Suhana P, B Ramesh, the driver, the other staff of the director’s office, Mr A K Nayak, Security much beyond their duties very readily, willfully without counting the time beyond the office hours in a selfless way could make the director function without any feeling of inadequacy in the support systems and he expresses his gratitude.

Prof Kumar places on record his appreciation to Mr Swapnil More, the VP, the other student members of the 2021-22 batch, Student Gymkhana for their outstand support and help in bringing the students out of the hostels in to the play fields in the exceptionally large percentages not seen elsewhere and engaging them in all the positive activities after the pandemic, which continued as a signature of the campus. He also acknowledges the former council members for their help in creating the student culture as a signature.

The Vision and Practicing of Holistic Wellbeing

To have an open-minded and compassionate mind set, be able to put enough effort into academics while taking time for socio-cultural and sports activities at the same time, and playing his/her role as a good human, team player, partner, and friend without conflicts.

Essentials:

• Regular physical activity,
• Healthy diet,
• Healthy sleep, controlled mind,
• Supportive relationships and friendships,
• Sense of purpose and meaning.

Mechanisms Adopted at IIT Bhubaneswar:

• Creation of a healthy, clean, green, bright, positive and eco-friendly campus environment by design, as a very important pre-requisite - IITBBS campus is now exceptional in all of the above,
• Adopting a very effective Counseling service and stress busting,
• Conducting workshops and talks on life skills, success and failure, substance abuse, gender sensitivity, vigilance awareness, human values and relations, national heritage, general studies, … by the side of developments in Science & Technology,
• Organizing an exceptional Rejuvenation-cum-Orientation programme to the freshers,
• Ensuring a completely drug – free campus,
• Mandatory yoga and meditation training through the Extra Academic Activity,
• Promoting a healthy and disciplined student culture in the campus,
• Creating a bi-cycling and exceptional sports culture
• Encouraging vibrant socio-cultural activities and other activities through student gymkhana
• Creating and engaging students in vibrant outreach and service oriented activities
• Creating and ensuring very responsible health care services
• Healthy and hygienic catering service in the mess and food outlets
• Ensuring efficient functioning of the systems and services in the institute.

IIT Bhubaneswar Campus – Designed and Created to be Clean, Green, Bright, Positive and Eco-friendly:

• When Prof Kumar took over as director, the phase-1 infrastructure of 1.10 lac SqM was half done. After joining, while completing the same, he got the opportunity to plan and create the phase-2 infrastructure with 2.02 lac SqM.
• Prof Raja Kumar personally took the responsibility of ensuring bright, spacious, positive, green and eco-friendly ambiance in the campus and carried out the following by himself:
  • Master planning for Phase-2 and beyond up to the student strength of 5000,
  • Not so satisfied with the architect’s version, he himself gave the architecture for the academic and residential campuses which were agreed upon by all,
  • Plan for the full landscaping and greenery and providing guidance in realizing it, in-house.
  • Interiors and exteriors of buildings were designed mostly using natural light, natural ventilation, greenery etc., and worked on the planning and architecting. It may not be out of place to mention that he personally intervened to take the design exercise to 2nd and 3rd iterations and 90% the colour schemes, tiles, slabs, pavers, etc., and patterns were his personal choices and selections.
• Finally, 90% of phase-2 infrastructure was also completed during his term (it would have been 100% but for defaulting by the contractors of STP line and the external development works of the academic campus ),
• Nearly 50,000 trees were planted with excellent planning and theme-based plantations.

The results are amazing - perhaps, the campus of IITBBS is perhaps the best amongst all the IIT’s and it relieves one of his/her stresses and generates positive thoughts, everywhere in the campus.

• Creation of the Master Plan for the Growth of IITBBS
• Creation of the Architectural Plan for Academic Campus
• Creation of the Architectural Plan for Residential Campus
• Creation of an Exceptional Landscaping and Greenery and Glimpses of Designs Provided

Creating a Strong Outreach Programme and Engaging Students Constructively, Therein:

Through R &D: IITBBS has a strong R&D outreach programme under which the institute helps solving the research problems which are local and national. The institute also takes along some other institutions in its endeavors.

Ex: Design and Innovation Center, IIT Bhubaneswar has been acting as a hub and been mentoring the activities at BOSE -Cuttack, Kv-2 - Bhubaneswar, Ravenshaw University, and CET – Bhubaneswar,

Through the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA): The institute adopted 6 villages in which the institute has been trying to make technology interventions to make a difference in the lives of people with a strong constructive engagement of students.

Inspiring school children of the hinterland to pursue education and innovations in S&T: Prof Raja Kumar was keen and created a strong outreach programme to inspire the school children from the hinterland with an inspiring engagement of students.

Through Continuing Education Programme (CEP) and Training: IITBBS has a strong CEP through which the institution helps the other organization and industry by catering to their continuing education and training needs.

• IIT Bhubaneswar playing a role in the area of design and innovation

Rejuvenation-cum-Orientation Programme