KOCHI: Allaying apprehensions over the employability of students from various engineering institutes, several graduates from the Department of Ship Technology, Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat), have secured placements, including jobs in foreign shipyards, through campus recruitment.
Of these, Yashwant R Kamath pocketed a plum pay packet for a fresher. The salaries offered range from Rs 10- Rs 24 lakh per annum.
According to K Sivaprasad, professor, Department of Ship Technology, all students who were shortlisted bagged offers from international and domestic shipyards.
“There are 43 seats for naval architecture and shipbuilding in our department. Of these, 15 seats are reserved for Navy personnel. In the case of Navy personnel, once they pass the course, they get absorbed by their parent organisation while the rest of the students send in applications for campus recruitments,” he said.
This year, students from the department got placements in shipyards in developed countries, including Netherlands, Norway and Japan.
“We need more foreign companies and shipyards to come to the campus. Though we make our students job-ready by sending them to various domestic shipyards, the need of the hour is to get them exposure in foreign technology. The department has a strong alumni connection and this has helped us invite foreign companies to our campus to conduct recruitments,” he said.
According to him, the department's excellent placement record might also be due to the peculiarity of the stream.
"Ours is the only campus that offers naval architecture and shipbuilding as a package. Others offer just naval architecture," he said. This prompted the students from the department to form a consultancy called STICON, he added.
“The person who played a pivotal role in the functioning was Yashwant R Kamath, who was recruited by Oshima Shipyard in Japan,” he said.
The fact that he published around eight papers in international and national journals also worked in Yashwant's favour. According to him, the work experience he gained at STICON, Lloyd's Register Asia, Cochin Shipyard Ltd and DESCON (Cusat) stood him in good stead during the selection process. “I also did a concept design of a passenger cruise vessel for Cochin Shipyard as part of my BTech project under the guidance of professor K Sivaprasad,” he said.
Yashwant said the preliminary design has been developed using the latest programmes like computational fluid dynamics (CFD). “So, Cochin Shipyard will not have to start from scratch if they bag a contract for a cruise vessel. The design has even been approved by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). It passed the IMO's evacuation with flying colours,“ he said. The ship designed by Yashwant has six decks and can carry up to 120 passengers.