Prof. Dr. Arindam Modak has been working as the Head of Humanities and Social Sciences Department at NIT Durgapur, West Bengal. He has done his Honors and Masters in English Literature and PhD in the field of Literature Theory. Also, he has an amazing 15 years of educational experience.

NIT Durgapur

Being a Faculty of the NIT, Durgapur, what are your responsibilities toward the students?

"I am responsible to educate students and take care of Department activities and events"

As a Faculty and Head of the Department, my topmost priority is to provide the best quality education and amenities to my students. I have observed that these days, Teachers usually concentrate more on research and less on Teaching, but we must remember that Teachers are known as teachers only because of their classroom teaching. I am also responsible for supervising and monitoring the administrative activities of our Department. 

When you first joined NIT, what was your vision for the institute and how far along have you come in implementing that vision?

"It was to impart practical knowledge in students and teach them life skills"

My vision when I joined this amazing institute was to coordinate Teaching with the daily experiences of life and offer more practical learning to students so that they can easily relate examples with whatever is happening in the outside world. Because good teaching is not only about having bookish knowledge or the kind of knowledge that we gain by doing research on various topics, Teaching is more than that and a real Teacher is the one who knows how to implement the learning in real life.

How do you establish a healthy relationship and environment in your college?

"By being a good communicator, listener and friend for my students"

I firmly believe that we as a Teacher should take care of our students just like their parents. Because we are the one with whom they spend a lot of time in school, be it during classes or co-curricular activities. Also, teachers should try to understand the Psychology of students while interacting with them. As being the Department Head, I also follow the same approach. I regularly interact with my students so that I can address and fix their academic and non-academic issues and queries on time, because once students will get personalized attention, their overall growth and development will happen in unimaginable ways. Also, I believe the responsibility of ensuring a good working-learning environment should be of both teachers as well as students, so by being a good communicator and friends of my students, I ensure good relationships with them.

How can English Literature help people in general life?

"English Literature gives you a holistic approach to look at positive sides of life"

As much as I have observed people, their general perception is that if you are studying or teaching English Literature, it will not have much applications in real life, but I would like to assure you that this is not the case. Because, suppose you want to know more about life, you usually read lots of Novels, Mahabharat, Drum Plays or Shakespeare’s Plays etc. Also Novelists, when they write a novel, they actually portray what we see in society in general and places. But literature can help you to have a holistic vision of life, no matter which field you join after finishing your education or Graduation courses. And that vision will guide you towards the integration of different approaches that you have in your life. So that is how studying literature can help anyone, even an engineer or a doctor or anyone for that matter. That's it.

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How do you prepare your students to deal with the outside competitive world?

"By motivating them to develop new skills and improve their communication and aptitude skills"

We keep encouraging our students that before stepping out in the corporate world, prepare yourself well, make yourself competent and proficient persons, develop required skills which you might need to work in the outside world. And for the same, we have included soft skills related subjects, training programs and events in our curriculum so that we can strengthen students' communication, public speaking, presentation and linguistic skills. Because if you are confident enough while interacting with others, rest things would go smoothly, and both technical as well as communication skills would be mandatory for them. In today's world subject knowledge is not enough. We have demolished the geographical boundaries and we are going towards the kind of one economic society. Like multinational corporations, they are doing business in different countries, in different states. Along with all these, a positive attitude is necessary to overcome many evils of life, hence we ask our students to approach things and people positively.

What challenges are you facing to uplift the education quality of your department?

"Unavailability of proper infrastructure and Teaching staff is a real challenge for us"

Although student strength is quite good in our college and more students are enrolling themselves in our institute to pursue their dream courses. The Department of Humanities & Social Sciences has been successfully running a Master of Social Work program for the last few years. We have recruited faculty members from the best-known Institutes and Universities for the program, and our students are getting employed in top government and non-government organizations in the country. So that's the positive part I believe, but on the other side, the infrastructure of our college is not so well developed which sometimes creates an issue for us and our students as delivery of good education demands good infrastructure and research facilities. So establishment of infrastructure as per educational and industrial standards and requirements is a real challenge for us. And I firmly believe that the government should come forward to help us in this respect and finding out experienced and highly educated faculties is another roadblock for us.

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Any suggestions which you would like to give to the current youth and aspiring students?

"Focus on gathering quality education and stay disciplined towards your goals"

As we all are aware that this is the age of technological innovations and developments and also of revolutions in the discipline of Information Technology. So, I would like to advise my dear students and youths of our society to use the available information in the best possible way, and there is no need to consume all the information as everything will not be as relevant as per your interest and passion. Hence, choose wisely the information you want to consume, stay focused towards your goals, be conscious of your needs, priorities, strengths as well as weaknesses. Always try to contribute something back to society by utilizing your skills, knowledge and experience as society and its people are paying for you in invisible ways.