BENGALURU: Three city college students – Abhay Rangan, Asher John Sathya and Priyanka Srivastava – were selected for the University Innovation Fellows programme at Stanford College USA recently. The programme aims to empower students to become agents of change in their institutions.
After returning from a seven-day long programme, Abhay Rangan, a telecommunication engineering student at CMRIT, says, “It was a pretty brilliant experience. We got to go to the Google and Microsoft headquarters and Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. There was a lot of brainstorming and training on a number of topics such as design thinking, leadership and lean startups. The programme has built a lot of self-confidence.”
During the programme, Abhay highlighted the discrepancies in the Indian education system. “We spoke about the challenges facing the country. We highlighted on how Indian education system emphasises on classroom learning rather than on practical methods of teaching and problem-solving. Our peers all just want to get a job,” he says, adding, “Learning in a class is not only about sitting for 40 minutes or for fixed time.There are a number of other factors. We need to bring a reform in the education system. I have started to work on this goal in my own small way,” he says.
Abhay has already started two organizations - a non-profit for animals’ rights and a startup called Vegan Arce that aims to make “plant-based food more accessible to people”
Besides the three students from the city selected for the programme, there were two others from the Gogte Institute of Technology, Belgaum for the academic year
2016-17.