About Mo College Abhijan Parichalana Sangathan (MCAPS)
Through the years, we learn, grow and become better versions of ourselves. While there are various drivers in this journey, our Alma Maters play a role that is indisputably unparalleled. They mould us in inexplicable ways, shape our perspectives and give us the courage to face the world that is out there. We must never forget that a lot of what we are today, we owe it to these impeccable institutions that have been an indispensable part of our lives. From intense learning to the most memorable and jovial moments, we have seen it all as students! For the sake of these unforgettable memories and all that we have received from our Alma Maters, we must also experience the joy that giving back to our alma mater entails.
Embarking on this belief, the Mo College programme aims to design emotionally invested platforms thus connecting the rich Odia Alumni Diaspora in the world & create building blocks for development. In lines with the invincible power of the 5T Action plan of Honourable Chief Minister of Odisha, Sj. Naveen Patnaik, the success of this program will be the outcome of productive technological intervention, integrated team effort & transparent processes that would be rolled out within a targeted timeline so as to unveil to the world, the larger canvas of transformation.
For proper implementation of this unique endeavour, Mo College Abhijan Parichalana Sangathan (MCAPS) has been registered as a society under the aegis of the Dept. of Higher Education, Govt. of Odisha.
Our Logo
“The Pen is mightier than the Sword”. The Mo College logo primarily embarks on this underlining philosophy. Stemming from the Pen are the indicative references of domains spanning across Technology, Research, Industry-Academia linkages, Sports & Fine-Arts etc that the Mo College platform aspires to bring into the college ecosystem thus ensuring a holistic development of the students in Odisha. The Mo College platform also provides a unique interface to the Global Alumni Diaspora from Odisha & their respective Alma Maters to Connect, Converse & Converge so as to collaborate in their mission to showcase the larger canvas of transformation for a New Odisha.
The Tagline captures an emotional appeal in its sincere attempt to inculcate a sense of deep respect & pride in the Alumni for their Alma Maters.
Needless to say…”Nothing really feels more rewarding than the Joy of giving back to the Alma Mater”.
Goals & Objectives
The goals and objectives of “Mo College” shall be as hereunder:
- To connect the alumni with their alma mater. All State Universities and Government Colleges /Aided Colleges of all types located in Odisha shall come under the coverage of Mo College Abhijan.
- To explore how the alumni can associate for the betterment of the college eco-system.
- To invite alumni to the college to interact with students/ faculties/staff and share their life lessons/ experience, success stories, etc. in order to inspire and motivate the students/ faculties/ staff.
- To provide a platform to the alumni to offer their services on voluntary basis for betterment of the college eco-system.
For Example:-- A doctor may be invited to conduct a health check-up camp or talk on health and hygiene issues
- A technocrat working in a nearby industry may be contacted to facilitate exposure visit of students to the said industry.
- An NGO representative may be contacted to take the students to the operational area of the NGO to give them a feel of the ground realities.
- An agriculturist or horticulturist may be contacted to take the students to a nearby agriculture or horticulture farm for exposure.
- To receive donation, if any, either in shape of cash/cheque/electronic transfer and/or in shape of materials, from alumni and its proper utilization for betterment of the college eco-system.
- Similar voluntary services and / or donations can also be availed from non-alumni Philanthropists, Charitable Organizations, Group of Persons, Institutions, etc.
- To undertake activities for conducting motivational programmes and value education-oriented activities for the current students of colleges/universities and to supplement the activities of the Higher Education Department pertaining to Career Counselling of the current students. This may be undertaken with/ without involving Alumni.
Mission & Vision
- Establish & strive to create an environment among the colleges in Odisha with a view to educate the students to face socio-economic challenges by providing a healthy learning environment which is grounded on the principles of nation-building, promoting creativity, skill development & nurturing teamwork, thereby making the Colleges & Universities an innovative & exciting place to study.
- A technocrat working in a nearby industry may be contacted to facilitate exposure visit of students to the said industry.
- An NGO representative may be contacted to take the students to the operational area of the NGO to give them a feel of the ground realities.
- An Agriculturist may be contacted to take the students to a nearby agriculture or horticulture farm for exposure.
- To receive donations, if any, either in shape of cash/cheque/electronic transfer &/or in shape of materials from alumni & its proper utilization for the betterment of College ecosystem.
- Similar voluntary services &/or donations can also be availed from non-alumni philanthropists, charitable organisations, group of persons, institutions etc.
- To undertake activities for conducting motivational programs & value education-oriented activities for the current students of the College/Universities & to supplement the activities of the Dept. of Higher Education, GoO. This may be undertaken with or without involving alumni.
Areas of Focus
We have identified about 11 high level interconnected areas of focus which will provide an environment to foster learning through innovation and leadership.
Digital College
The idea behind a digital college is to establish a set of digital resources to create a differential value to the college, students and the faculty. There are numerous approaches to conducting this and we are focusing on the following:
- identifying the opportunities and/or challenges in the colleges where online assets can provide a solution;
- identifying the unmet needs and goals of the students and faculty
- developing a vision around how the online assets will fulfill those needs, goals, opportunities and challenges
- prioritizing a set of online initiatives which can deliver on this vision
At a high level, following are the processes which can be considered.
- Admission to College Leaving and beyond: ensuring that a process can be established which can enable the complete digitization of the admission, examination process
- Digital inclusion for parents: ensuring that that the parents of the students also get exposed to the aspects of digital in various forms. This is to bridge the digital divide between the parents and their wards
- Paperless Campus: ensuring that no paper (or negligible paper) is used to conduct the normal business of the day
- Transparency in Admission to Exam process: the process of admission and examination are conducted online and results, process etc are updated.
- Continuous Feedback: set up a feedback loop collect the feedback from each college and revise the process as needed.
Setting up a Digital Resource Library: collecting and archiving various article, journals, publication, case studies and books and making it available to the student at their ease and accessibility.
Industry Connect
An ongoing challenge for the industry is finding graduates who are up to date on the latest trends and technology innovations in a particular field. Employers want new hires who can plug in and be productive from day one, instead of requiring costly and time-consuming training to get them up to speed. The challenge for colleges, on the other hand, is innovating new ways to educate and develop students who can hit the ground running and contribute immediately to fast-paced, team-oriented, technology-driven workplaces.
Following areas can contribute to this process.
- Workshops: Employers conduct various workshops in the college
- Seminars: Conducted by various luminaries, industry veterans, college alumni etc
- Webinars: Web based training, sessions, talks conducted by Mo College and broadcasted to all colleges
- Projects: Industry sponsored projects which can be run by the faculty
- Speaker Series: Periodic events where speakers from various walks of life can talk to the students
- Employer Connect: Periodic connect with companies, departments of Govt etc to discuss new technologies, trends, innovations etc
Alumni Connect
Creating an engaged, supportive alumni network is crucial to an institution’s success. Good alumni relationships bring many benefits to both the institution and the alumni. There could be very detailed and involved process to create an alumni network. At the very minimum, following can be considered as part of this initiative.
- Annual Meet: Annual, planned meeting of the alumni of the colleges. This will help refresh memories and will provide a platform for the alumni to understand the issues on the ground
- Fund Raisers: Annual or periodic fund raisers whereby the college administration or the alumni connect executive can reach out to the alumni
- Hostel/Campus visits: Plan “down-the-memory-lane” type of visits for the alumni
- Digital Closed Forum: This will be a digital forum to raise queries, share achievements, provide mentorship to the students by the alumni of the respective college.
Academic Connect
Enables the colleges to connect with other relevant pre-identified colleges inside India or overseas (external colleges) to foster curriculum-based learning.
- Tie-up with pan-India and overseas colleges: choose from a set of colleges which can be roped in to provide insights into curriculum-based learning
- Competitions: Enabling the students to participate under various competitions held in the tied-up colleges
- Faculty Visits: Visit by faculty from other colleges under this connect program to provide valuable insights
- Inter-College meets: Exchange of academic ideas through discussions with the external colleges
- Technical Workshops: Use the infrastructure of the external colleges to conduct technical workshops
- Continuous Feedback loop: establish a feedback loop to keep learning from the external colleges
Finishing School
As per AICTE, a finishing school is defined as "a private school for students that emphasizes training in all round personality development, cultural and social activities. Specific skill sets may be imparted as value addition. The name reflects that it follows a school or college education and is intended to complete the educational experience. It may consist of an intensive course, or a one-year program.
The intent of finishing school in the Mo College context is to provide such focused skills to enable the students to enter the society with desired qualifications. This can be achieved by the following:
- Toastmasters: Creation of Toastmaster clubs within each college to enable the students to speak on a pre-defined platform in order to build confidence
- Programming Connects: Set up labs for the students to learn programming. This is not necessarily software-based coding, but providing an aspect of interacting with computers.
- Hackathons: Provide a platform for the students to compete and complete a task with limited resources and time.
- Cultural Immersion: Provide for students from other external colleges to visit the campus and the students from Mo College to visit the external colleges
- TEDx type events: Create a platform for the students from within the nearby colleges to come together and speak on issues closer to their study.
- Spoken and Written English with Personality development: Provide for regular spoken and written English classes to be conducted within the college for the students to be fluent in speaking English and gain confidence to be more presentable.
Career Building
The primary objective of Mo College is to provide various platforms so that the students can get a job of their choice when the graduate. A simple way is to enable the following for the students to participate and get the advantage.
- Job Portal: Create a statewide job portal where all the jobs coming from any and every Govt and non-Govt entities are listed. The portal should also allow for each student to submit their profile so as to be evaluated for a specific job.
- Campus Invites: Invite the Govt and non-Govt agencies to visit the campus and recruit students. Alternatively, there can be an off-campus process where the students can come from multiple colleges.
- Higher Education tie-ups: Set-up tie-ups with external colleges/universities for higher education. This will enable the student to see what lies ahead when they graduate.
- Entrepreneurship Opportunities: Create an ecosystem to mentor the ideas of the student to launch their startup through faculty, alumni & industry leaders.
Skill Identification and Skill Enhancement
Due to lack of awareness and scope sometime a student ends up to a subject where his skill doesn’t match to the requirement. In that case the special skill of the student has to be identified in the early days of the college and should be given a considerable amount of priority. The skill may be anything such as Sports, Music, Dance, Photography and many more.
Digital & Social Presence
Having a digital and social presence is a need of the hour. Both student and the college has to create and maintain their social presence efficiently.
For College:
- A website – Just having a website will not solve the purpose. The website should be updated with all relevant information such as, faculty details, alumni details, achievements by students, events gallery, Blogs by students and many other advance features and to the trend of 2019 -20.
- Social Media Presence – Having Social media presence in all relevant platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube with regular updates subjected to the achievements of students, Events conducted and other day to day operations.
For Students:
Social presence is the ability of students to project their personal characteristics into a larger community, thereby presenting themselves as ‘real people’ on the internet.
- LinkedIn Presence: Each student needs to create a professional profile presenting their skills on LinkedIn and maintain it properly. A guideline can be made and proper guidance can be given by a professional agency how to grow their professional network.
- Personal Blog Page: If a student has something to share related to his academics or his extra-curricular activity, he/she must be encouraged to do blogging.
Campus Characteristics
Intent is to create a faculty-student-college bonding.
- Increased Interaction with Faculties
- Personal Attention
- Super 30 type of counselling
- Clean and hygiene Campus
- Resident Focus (Hostel)
Course Delivery
Find newer ways of delivering courses to the students:
- Online Classes
- Weekend Classes
- Weak Student focus
- Targeted Students: Find the top 1 percentile who can bring a difference and coach them for excellence
- Built-in Rewards: Reward the students and faculty who align with the overall goals of the Mo College and work tirelessly to make this a success
Nation Building
The aim of the Mo College program is nation building. A few non-academic programs can help achieve this wider objective.
- Social activities: Each college can pick up a social activity which directly contributes to the society. One such example of such activities could include teaching school kids.
- Adopt a child: The objective of this would be to be responsible and accountable to a school kid whose progress can be monitored by the college student. This is a ‘buddy’ type relationship which will being in a sense of responsibility.
- Plantation: The students can pick up plantation as a mandatory activity for every event in the college. A student can plant a tree in his/her own name.