Buzzingg Celebrate your successes – Big or Small
One of the biggest concerns of educators across India today, is making the present generation learners future-ready. Performance trends reveal that urban learners always secure better grades than their rural counterparts. It is not calibre that affects the performance of rural students, but the resources and opportunities available to them. It’s fair to say that being a role model teacher in a rural education setup is an enormous challenge. It takes patience, passion, resilience, and a lot of commitment. Meet Srinivas Gunda, Associate Professor and HoD of Commerce and Business Management department in NSV Degree College, Jagtial, Telangana; who is a positive, guiding light for his students, providing them hope and the tools they’ll need to succeed well beyond their graduation years. He has been recently honoured with Best Faculty in Rural Institution Award by Arunai International Research Foundation.
Srinivas hails from Kothapally village in Karimnagar district of Telangana. A topper of his M.Com. Batch, he funded his own education by taking tuitions for commerce intermediate and degree students from rural background. He started his career in 2003 as Assistant Professor in Commerce and Business Management at Vivekananda Degree and P.G. College, Vavillapalle, Karimnagar. In order to gain deeper understanding of all aspects of Business Administration, he utilised distance learning opportunities and completed BA (English), LLB and MBA while working at the institution.
After his MBA, he decided to expand his horizons and teach students from different disciplines and therefore joined Jyothishmathi Institute of Technology and Sciences, Thimmapur, Karimnagar, in 2009. He taught to B.Tech., BCA, MCA and MBA students at the institute. He got a very good experience in teaching graduate and post graduate students at the institute. He was also an active member in organizing various conferences and initiatives at the institute.
In 2013, Srinivas’s wife took up a government job as a Hindi college teacher in Korutla which is around 90km from Karimnagar. The long commute for her, both of them having full day jobs and resulting difficulties in maintaining work-life balance, prompted Srinivas to shift their base to Jagtial, a town nearer to Korutla than Karimnagar. Srinivas joined in N S V Degree College, Jagtial, as an Associate Professor in Business Management department and within a month of his joining, impressed by his work, he was also made the Head of the Department.
While working at the institution, he soon realized that the commerce and business administration students at the institution lacked the much needed exposure to the industry as most of them came from a rural background and had limited resources. The passionate teacher, as he is, decided to bring about a positive change in their careers.
He focused on making his students come out of the theory-only mode of learning and adopt a more practical-oriented approach. He organized multiple seminars and conferences for his students to build their industry awareness and exposure. He also took lot of efforts in inviting speakers from other reputed institutes for guest lectures to guide his students on the latest industry trends. He used his network and arranged industrial visits for his students to gain a first hand knowledge of business operations – an initiative he started in his department. Those interested in further studies were guided by him personally in applying for courses in prominent universities.
His efforts started bearing fruits and many of his students are now doing higher studies in prominent universities in India and abroad. Not only that, many of his students are getting placed in companies through campus placements or getting jobs as lecturers in other institutes.
The progress we are seeing couldn’t have been possible without the full cooperation and support of our honourable chairman Mr. Naveen Reddy, Management team and my Colleagues and Staff at NSV College.
Srinivas Gunda, Asso. Prof. and HoD
Research Focus
Srinivas has attended close to 20 seminars, conferenccs, workshops and faculty development programs to keep himself updated with latest industry trends. He has co-authored 3 books on Accounting and has published 14 ISBN and ISSN research articles in varous journals. He is in the final leg of submitting his PhD thesis. His research area is Performance Evaluation of Mutual Funds in India – A Comparitive Study.
The primary objectives of his research is to analyze the performance of mutual funds in India and studying the behaviour of Indian individual investors towards the investment of their savings. For studying the performance of mutual funds, he has analyzed 119 open ended mutual fund schemes from Growth, Income, Balanced and ELSS investment styles during the period between April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2016.
I am passionate about teaching. I would like to continue to focus on research and nurturing future talent.
Srinivas Gunda, Asso. Prof. and HoD
His passion for creating opportunities for rural students stems from a philosophy that education should be a level playing field for all students – no matter what their background or where they are from. The main problem today is that majority of the innovations in teaching are focused on improving the quality of urban education while the rural learners and their education remain largely neglected. We cannot but agree that, it is education that leads to the road to betterment of a community and the nation at large. And as long as teachers like Srinivas Gunda are holding their fort, we are confident that our students have a bright future ahead.
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