Paying back to the society has always been the primary focus of KIIT and its Founder Prof. Achyuta Samanta. As a part of its continuous and constant efforts of serving the needs of the society at large, KIIT has lent its hands to the UGC-PARAMARSH program. The objective of PARAMARSH program is to enhance the overall quality of the mentee institutions and mentoring the Non-Accredited Higher Education Institutions to enable them to get accredited. Being an organization which earned the status of Institution of Eminence (IoE) by virtue of its quality and value system in imparting world-class education, it is obvious that there could not be any better option than KIIT in partnering UGC in this program.
Under the PARAMARSH program, KIIT is supposed to mentor five institutions. But following the decision taken by the Founder to spread the program statewide, currently KIIT is mentoring 26 colleges and three universities. Many more institutes have expressed their interest and are waiting in the pipeline. In the meantime, KIIT has successfully organized six workshops which have been attended by more than 200 Principals and IQAC Coordinators from colleges of different parts of Odisha. KIIT is also helping the institutions which are already accredited in improving their grade. Continuing this, KIIT conducted a workshop on 24th September 2021 to review the progress of the Institutions mentored by it.
Speaking on this occasion, Prof. Sasmita Samanta, Pro-Vice Chancellor, KIIT-DU and Accreditation Ambassador, PARAMARSH expressed her happiness and highlighted the importance of accreditation stressing the need to know the strength of the institution and plan for future course of action accordingly. She motivated all the participants to prepare a proper road-map for research, teaching and academics to get a decent rating in the accreditation process.
Prof. Jayanta Kumar Parida, Director, KIIT School of Commerce & Economics conducted the workshop and reviewed the progress of the mentee institutions. Coordinator of the KIIT PARAMARSH, Prof. Parida, from his experiences of decades of being one of the members of accreditation committees of NAAC, enlightened the audience with various measures that can be taken by the institutions to ensure a good accreditation. Reviewing the performances of the institutions, he pointed out some key focus areas like Maintenance of Records, Curriculum Development, Research & Innovation, Extension Activities, ICT Development, etc, on which the institutions should work on.
Prof. Chinmay Kumar Panigrahi, Director-IQAC, KIIT discussed in detail about the different criteria under the revised accreditation framework. He appealed to the mentee institutions to work tirelessly to achieve their goal.
Earlier, in his welcome address Dr. Biswajit Mishra, Dean-Quality Assurance spoke about the various efforts being made by KIIT under the PARAMARSH program for the mentoring of the institutions. The program concluded with an one to one discussion with all the mentee institutions where they spoke about the various measures they have taken as per the advice of KIIT and how it will help them achieve a good accreditation. More than 70 participants, including the Principals, IQAC Coordinators and members from all the mentee colleges and universities participated at the workshop.