Dr. T. Hari Babu is currently serving as the Vice Principal and Professor at the Lendi Institute of Engineering and Technology. He holds specializations in English language and literature and carries a Ph.D. degree. He has published numerous articles on the English language and its uses. He has served as a Resource Person for various educational institutes, conducting programs on subjects like Life Skills, Soft Skills, Creative Writing, and English Language Teaching. He has attended several national and international seminars, workshops, and webinars on diverse topics related to education, language, and teaching methodologies. He has actively participated in conferences and has been recognized for his contributions to the field of education. His areas of interest include research methodology, communication skills, and innovative teaching practices. Furthermore, he joined his current institution on January 6, 2008, and holds the designation of Professor.

Lendi Institute of Engineering and Technology

You have held key positions at education institutes throughout your professional career. What are the key factors that keep you connected with the education sector?

I have worked for about 25 years, and within this period of time, education has undergone a lot of changes. During this time, somewhere around 2000, I was working as a teacher. All that while, I realized that there are a lot of new changes coming up, especially in the mindsets of students. The student's understanding level is declining day by day with their style of taking things. So that was the one key observation I had, and the education sector demanded me to be with it particularly because it has a lot of room for practicing and any other field might not give that kind of beautiful opportunity. I believe that the education sector fosters a lot of opportunities, and being a teacher in the education sector, I had numerous chances to always get myself up to date on the latest technologies and trends. It also made me ethical by making me connect with a lot of people, and people's ethics are somewhat similar to people's values, and these values and ethics get us connected to education. So I keep track of myself through my opinions. In my perspective, education will give a lot of hope to those who really want to come forward and grow in their respective careers. Talking about today’s scenario, most of the teachers are working under pressure because there is less room for this kind of newness because the learners with whom they are dealing lack focus. One last word: education gives you room for interesting practices.

Being the Vice principal of Lendi Institute of Engineering and Technology, what is your philosophy of leadership? How would you describe your leadership style?

First of all, thank you so much for the question that you have chosen. In fact, coming up with leadership ideas today is definitely an important and balanced activity. In fact, being a vice principal of an institution like this gives me a lot of challenges in terms of how to make myself balanced, keep myself up on leadership, and emerge as a leader. At first, I started practicing being ethical, honest, mature, balanced, and above all, knowing how to adjust to the situations around me. Strongly believing in leadership is nothing but a kind of ethical adjustment. Leadership is nothing but bringing out moral dilemmas with its own wonderful solutions. As a vice principal, I have never had such trouble at this institute since I started working here right from its inception. Basically, I am very fortunate to have worked with this institution for the past 15 years. I am familiar with all the odds and evens of the institute. I have worked a lot for the establishment of this institution, which helped me emerge as the right leader. So on the whole, I can say that leadership requires a lot of patience, commitment, and adjustments. 

Being the Vice Principal of Lendi Institute of Engineering and Technology, how do you strategize about the key programs and plans for the marketing and administration of your college?

Being a Vice Principal in the administration of this institute, I always feel that my position is hankering me to think about making my college a brand. But somewhat we are building ourselves with a policy of education comprising of human values. Hence, we strongly believe in zero-budgeted programs to be carried out for branding and advertisement. Education is interlinked with a value system. The value system is interlinked with less-budgeted activity. Hence, we strongly believe that no branding is possible without the effort that we put in. So, we strongly believe in effort. We wanted to see our institution go so deep into the minds of the stakeholders, particularly the primary stakeholders for our students. So we are prioritizing offering help to our students to understand us, and once they are successful, we will make them the face of our institution. They themselves have become bright ambassadors today, and I think on CollegeDunia too, they have started writing a few reviews on our institution's progress. So we would love to have a kind of branding that involves face-to-face interaction, even if it is quite traditional. We believe in making it successful. We are running it very well, and I will be the first to be obliged to have this ethical leadership.

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The education system in India and other foreign countries are structured very differently. In your experience, what can an inbound student gain from studying here at your university? 

So definitely, education is a policy idea. Particularly in education, learning has its liberty. I personally have a concern for education policy that says education must be structured, but its learning should be a kind of liberty. So that kind of open liberty is given at our institution which makes one ready for future challenges. The same would be found anywhere across the globe, as education is driving students from darkness to reality. That's true, and education is what is helping these youngsters understand what life is all about, so we strongly believe in building a career and character. The education we are rendering at our institution is based on principles that include taking care, building character and establishing great career growth. 

How does the curriculum of Lendi Institute of Engineering and Technology ensure the best practice for industries?

So as part of this new education policy, every institute has to follow outcome-based education. So even our institution has started using the outcome-based education system since 2015. Well, we were aware that the accreditations of higher education demand outcome-based education. It means the outcome was set well in advance. Working for that outcome is the story of outcome education, or outcome-based education. So our curriculum is filled with various credit-choice-based credit systems. Our institute offers various skill development courses. We also offer compulsory internships to our students that will allow them to work on international exposure and taking from the beginning. For instance, English as a subject concern, we provide guidance to them to get ready for internationally acclaimed qualifications like Cambridge's Upskill, which we are offering. It is test-based learning, and similarly, the British Council's English score is another certificate that we are offering where we allow students to get exposed to international platforms. So keeping all of this in one bundle education system that was established at Lendi Institute is bringing a lot which is industry-specific. The sole vision that we have is to make our technocrats suitable as per the industry needs. So unless the academia that is working out with the industry has the right alignment, it won't really bring the right success. That is what our belief system is, so the Institute strongly advises its family members to carry out that important success.

What do you think your roles and responsibilities are towards the university and the students?

I am a teacher who is strongly in love with my profession along its short roots. Like every other child, I also had a dream to become a language teacher since my childhood. My father always wanted me to pursue a career as an engineer. I even fought with my father to pursue the career of my choice. Slowly and gradually, opportunities knocked on my door and I became a successful language teacher. So basically, being a language teacher, I had the strongest philosophy in understanding human values and how education is interrelated with human values. So humans value importance and development. So there is a wonderful emphasis on my career growth. Most of the students started loving me in the first instance. I strongly believe that if you want to have a subject, you must start loving its teacher. So that happened in my case, most of my students started loving language communication. Most of the institutes have Engineering and Science as majors, but not English as a major. But in our college, it is because of our team effort only. Most of the English teachers who work with me are very cooperative. Whatever crazy idea I put before them, they come forward to accept it and put it into practice. So these practices were very well transferred to the students. The English lab is on par with any other technical lab.

Any insights into how your university could be more welcoming to students of different races and economic backgrounds?

Really, it is the toughest question for me since we are residing in a rural area. In fact, our institution was established long ago in the suburbs of a couple of cities, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam. We really struggled to establish it like this. A great vote of thanks to our founders, who is still our principal today, Doctor VV Rama Reddy, whom we call Rama Reddy Sir. So, it was only because of his vision that we came up to cater to the needs of our local surroundings. So far, for the past 15 years, we have been expanding our wings to fly high in the sky of education. We are trying our level best to meet all the needs of the foreign students too. Fortunately, so far in all these 15 years, we have had students from Chhattisgarh, a nearby state. What is the nearby state? West Bengal, this side Telangana, that side Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu But beyond that, we don't have students from other places. But in the recent past, as a part of “Ek Bharat and Sri Bharat”, we were the only institute from Andhra Pradesh that participated in that flagship program of the Government of India, to come and be with us. When that university came, we saw that there were many students who had come from different places and different nations. At that very moment er realized that many Nationals and other international national figures are expected, enticed and attracted. We are still focusing on attracting such students by offering an interesting curriculum. Our infrastructure facility, and most importantly, our committed faculty members are top-most. We have around 185 committed teachers and a 48 percent retention rate with 15 years of experience in the same instance. So with this, we definitely feel that we are going to welcome the right international figures with us.