Tools from the scrapyard and a space to spur their creativity

“We realised that most of the time students are busy working on projects that help them improve their grades. This leaves them with no space for creative thinking. A fair percentage of students have ideas different from the mainstream but the absence of any space where inter-departmental projects can be tried out leads to unidirectional approach,” said Sahil Chandratre,one of the group members. At the multi-facility room,students can try out different project ideas soon after entering college. The group has also arranged projects of the last five years from all departments and an inventory of all topics is also maintained and can be accessed in the reading room of the new facility.

Dheeraj Deshmukh,another team member,said,“We found that we had some equipment lying in the cupboards for more than 25 years. Some of those instruments are present in just two-three colleges in India. So we thought of putting them to use. We zeroed in on this problem after conducting a poll among 400 students in the college and after analysing the results,we found that most of respondents felt the need for more interaction and collaboration between various departments of the college.”

They are also toying with the idea of lending out the laboratory to other industrial units for their quality improvement research. “It will be a good exposure for our students as they will get to work on such projects while they are still in college. Implementation of the philosophy of the quality circle will happen in true spirit with more of such university-industry interactions and make this lab self-sustaining,” said Mohan Khond,training and placement head of COEP.