First woman VC of PU is an engineer with many firsts

Vig on Monday said she was drawn to teaching from the very beginning. “My mother was a teacher and she often told me me how much I loved to teach, and how I would hold an imaginary class even as a very young girl,” she said.

Her tryst with Panjab University started with her marriage. Her father-in-law was a distinguished professor of chemistry at the university.

Vig and her husband Sandeep — who was two years her senior at PEC — had two daughters, when she decided to pursue her PhD in Artificial Intelligence from PU.

Vig recalls how it wasn’t easy for a woman in STEM those days. At PEC, her male classmates — there were five girls and 25 boys in her class — used to tease her that she got good grades largely due to her smile. “This stopped when I became their lead problem solver,” she says.

Incidentally, UT Adviser Dharam Pal and Punjab’s Chief Secretary VK Janjua were in the same class as Vig.

The bias against girls in STEM ran deep, she said, while recounting a particular incident when classmates introduced her as the class topper to a new professor. She says he retorted, “Madam Curie was good but Einstein was more intelligent than her.”

“That was the mindset those days,” she said.

But at home, she was surrounded by men who always rooted for her. Vig recalls how her father-in-law, who was a visiting faculty at campuses in the US, wanted her to go abroad for PhD. “He said leave your daughters with us and go. But I could not muster the courage to leave my family,” she said.

Later, her husband rose to the defence of their daughter who got admission in the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, when she was in her mid-twenties. “I felt she should think about getting married. But my husband admonished me and said how will girls forge ahead if all mothers start thinking like me.”

Vij, who moved from PEC to NITTTR as a Reader in 1997, joined the University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET) in 2002, a year after it was set up. She has been the director of the institute from 2014.

It’s been 20 years now and Renu said she loves the vibrancy of the campus, its students, and staff.

Teaching, she says, has to change with the fast changing technology. “Students today are much more aware. They don’t rely on books alone, they have the Google. Everything in on the Internet. They must constantly update their knowledge and bring a lot of heft to their subject to keep the students engaged,” said Vig.

Prodded about the road ahead, Vig said she had big dreams for her alma mater. “We must make PU the top university. It should lead others in implementing changes envisaged in the New Education Policy. We have to focus on research, innovation and knowledge generation. We should be raising entrepreneurs.,” she said.

The country, she added, is poised on the threshold of a new era in education where students will have a lot of flexibility. “The PU must lead this change,” she signs change.”