National Institute of Technology Karnataka

National Institute of Technology Karnataka,Surathkal

राष्ट्रीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कर्नाटक,सूरतकल ರಾಷ್ಟೀಯ ತಾಂತ್ರಿಕ ಮಹಾವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ,ಸುರತ್ಕಲ್
File:Surthkal logo.png
Motto	तत्पूजा कर्मचाखिलम ಕಾಯಕವೇ ಕೈಲಾಸ
Motto in English	Work is worship
Type	Institute of National Importance
Established	1960 as The Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal
Chairman	Dr. Goverdhan Mehta
Director	Prof. Sandeep Sancheti
Undergraduates	1,900
Postgraduates	490
Location	Surathkal, Karnataka
Campus	Suburban, 295 acres (1.19 km2)
Surroundings	Arabian Sea and Western Ghats
Website	http://www.nitk.ac.in

The National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (Hindi:राष्ट्रीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कर्नाटक,सूरतकल Kannada: ರಾಷ್ಟೀಯ ತಾಂತ್ರಿಕ ಮಹಾವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ, ಸುರತ್ಕಲ್Tulu in tulu Script:രാഷ്ട്രീയ സാങ്കേതിക വിദ്യാപീഠം കര്‍ണാടക, സൂരത്കല്‍)(formerly known as Karnataka Regional Engineering College(KREC)), is an autonomous university along the western shores of India. It was founded in July 1960 as a joint venture between the Government of Karnataka and the Government of India, under the name Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal (KREC). Today, it is one of 18 National Institutes of Technology in India and is recognized as an Institute of National Importance. NITK Surathkal has been consistently ranked as one of the top engineering colleges in the country (see List of Engineering college rankings in India).

History

Main building

Karnataka Regional Engineering College began in 1960, through the efforts of U. Srinivas Mallya and V.S.Kudva. The foundation stone was laid on August 6, 1960. KREC began with three under-graduate courses in engineering: Mechanical, Electrical, and Civil, with affiliation to the University of Mysore. 1965 saw the beginning of undergraduate courses in Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering.

In 1966, the college started its post-graduate courses with a course in Marine Structures and Industrial Structures, followed by post-graduate courses in Industrial Electronics (1969), Heat Power (1971), Hydraulics and Water Resources (1971), Chemical Plant Design Engineering (1971) and Process Metallurgy (1972).

Further under-graduate engineering courses were added: Electronics and Communication (1971), Mining (1984), Computer Science (1986) and Information Technology (2000).

KREC came into the jurisdiction of Mangalore University when it was started in 1980. All the under-graduate courses were converted to four year terms (from five years earlier).

On June 26, 2002, KREC was renamed National Institute of Technology, Karnataka and awarded the status of a deemed university by the University Grants Commission, in a bid to provide increased autonomy in decision-making.

Campus

Located on National Highway 66(former NH-17), by the shores of Arabian Sea, NITK Surathkal is one of few universities in the world with a private beach, including a lighthouse(the only one in India). The campus is covering an area of about 295 acres (1.19 km²) and is covered by lush green vegetation in many areas.

Hostels

The institute is a residential engineering college; hence all attending students are required to enroll for hostel accommodation. Students from adjoining areas can commute from home with permission from the institution. There are 12 hostel blocks - ten for undergraduate boys, one for postgraduates and one for girls.

Construction of a new mega-hostel block for boys with three towers spanning seven floors each and housing over 1,500 single rooms has been completed while construction for a similar mega-hostel complex for women is underway. There are 2,000 undergraduate students, 800 postgraduate students, and 200 female students. Hostels forms the basis of social life at NITK, with parties, sports activities, gym, and other events taking place. The hostels are connected to the college network with optic fibre cables and 1 Gbit/s backbone connections.

Academics

NITK Surathkal offers undergraduate and graduate programs in Engineering, Science and Management. The institute has 14 departments and 11 support centres with about 200 faculty members, 300 support staff, 3300 students and 15,500 alumni worldwide.

Research and industrial consulting

Research in the institute is mainly sponsored by central and state government agencies with grants for the academic year reaching Rs. 100 million. Additionally newly recruited faculty are provided a seed grant of Rs. 5 lakhs for research. Faculty go on sabbaticals at foreign universities to encourage research and teaching interactions. Consulting activities are also conducted through the industry-institute partnership cell.

Admissions

Undergraduate programs

The B Tech admissions are based on the AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination). The exam consists of three sections on Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.

Undergraduate admissions are on reciprocal basis regionwise. 50% of the seats are reserved for students from Karnataka. The remaining 50% are distributed over other NITs on a reciprocal basis.

Ten percent of the seats in the undergraduate class are reserved for foreign students under the DASA scheme. The scheme had been implemented at the IITs in the late 1990s before being removed in 2002. Admissions are based on SAT scores obtained by prospective students.

Graduate Programs

Graduate students are admitted to the program through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) conducted by the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science. Postgraduate studies may specialize in fields of their choice. Graduate students are required to complete a minimum number of courses in addition to a thesis or dissertation that entails independent research under the guidance of faculty. Graduate and Doctoral students are also involved in teaching certain undergraduate courses.

All India Ranking

NITK Surathkal has been consistently ranked among the top technical schools in India.

Indian university rankings

	2010	2009	2008	2007	2006	2005	2004	2003	2002
India Today – Best Engineering Colleges in India	10	11			8				6
Education Times – Best Engineering Universities (All India)		9
Outlook India – Top Engineering Colleges	14	18	14	16	18
Dataquest – India's Best Technology Schools		9				11

Notable alumni

Alumni	Class year	Profession
Thomas Zacharia		Director of ORNL Computer Science and Mathematics Division
K.V. Kamath	1969	Non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank
Sridhar Rangayan		Filmmaker with a focus on Queer subjects.
K. Ullas Karanth		Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society India Program & Leading Tiger expert
Neeraj Gupta	1997	Director, GKB Hi-Tech

Student activities

While weekdays are spent in classrooms and labs, weekends are often spent indulging in activities organized by the college clubs.

The two most famous annual events are Engineer (a national level technical symposium) and Incident (a cultural festival). These events are planned, organized and managed by the students themselves - from fund collecting drives to the final events. The intra-college events are organized by the students' activity clubs.

The biggest intra-college event is called the Crescendo, which is a cultural festival organized by the Reading Room Committee. Students belonging to a year compete with other years in literary, personality, art and music competitions. Crescendo has been an annual tradition for three decades.

Local chapters of the Indian Society for Technical Education, the Institution of Engineers, the Rotaract Club, the Computer Society of India, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers](IEEE) organize events during the academic semester. These include blood donation camps, cloth donation drives, coastal cleanup camps, and events conducted by the National Service Sscheme (NSS) chapter of NITK. Cricket tournaments and freshers' parties are also held.

The Rotaract Club is a cultural and social club of the college. It hosts various events for students and club members alike.

There are technical clubs like WEB enthusiastic club. Dance Dramatics and Fashion Club (DDFC) organises the annual fest Spandan which provides students a platform to showcase their talent at dance and theatre. NITK has a Linux Users Group, which promotes free and open source Linux technology.

The Engineers' Forum for Entrepreneurship Awareness(E-FOREA)encourages entrepreneurial ideas from students and promotes leadership and entrepreneurship on campus. E-Pitch being their flagship business idea competition which attracts participation from all over the country.

The NITK Music Club organizes music shows and play popular music at the outdoor auditoriums. A variety of musical styles are on display at these events, from Indian classical music to fusion to rock.

Once a week, the NITK Films Club plays a movie at the Student's Activity Centre. Apart from English and Hindi releases, regional films are also shown.

The Mangalore chapter of the Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Among Youth (SPICMACAY) is centered at NITK and is one of the biggest and acknowledged chapters in the country. It organizes concerts and lecture-demonstrations by masters of Indian classical art-forms and strives to raise awareness of Indian culture in the surrounding regions through lectures, orientations and conventions.

The NITK Photography Club captures photos of events happening in NITK. It promotes photography as a hobby among the young engineers. It conducts "Expose", which is a national level photography contest organised yearly during INCIDENT - the annual cultural fest.The club contributes to the official yearbook, "The Vitruvian".

The amateur astronomy club - Star Gazing Club, conducts night shows for the students and the faculty of the campus. It runs workshops for the school students in the region.

Literary, Stage and Debating Society (LSD) is the apex literary forum of the institute. It was formmed in 2004. As the name suggests, the club holds debates, organises plays and mainly conducts quizzes. LSD was formed, in 2004, from the existing Quiz club of the college in order to cater to literary events other than quizzes. The club is one of the best in the country, having produced quizzers who have won competitions all over the country. Members of the club also contribute to the NITK Quiz blog, that has been active since 2008.

The Press Club brings out a fortnightly wall magazine 'News Wagon', providing a tongue-in-cheek look at life around the campus, besides bringing out the official yearbook, "The Vitruvian".

VOICE (Vedic Oasis for Inspiration, Culture and Education) is a youth group run by the students, for the students. They focus on training the students in a blend of character and competence. Ex-director, Dr G K Shivakumar's dynamic leadership and clear vision is the key behind the success of VOICE NITK chapter.

Robotics Club at NITK is a technical society that aims to create a robotics culture in the institute. The club aims to provide adequate tools, equipment and guidance so that projects can be successful.

Athletics

Sports facilities include the cricket ground, tennis lawns, shuttle badminton and table tennis complex, the basketball and volleyball courts along with a swimming pool.

The Recreation Committee of the institute organizes the recreational activities. The much awaited inter-year sports festival Phoenix is organized during the even semester where students battle for gold, silver and bronze medals, and the over-all shield. NITK sports teams participate in events all over the country such as at Inter-NIT sports meet.

Engineer

Engineer (Technical Festival) is the technical symposium of NITK Surathkal. It attracts participants from all over the country.

‘Engineer’ in its first edition in 2005 drew tremendous response. Engineer 2006 was planned on an even larger scale, with more innovative events. The events at Engineer 2006 included paper presentation competitions, project presentations, Shrishti, where participants are required to apply engineering for the greater good of society, robotics events (Perfect Machine, Automata), Hacking contests, Programming contests, Design problems, and workshops and seminars. Guest speakers have included Richard Stallman, Bjarne Stroustrup, Sam Pitroda, Dr. Devi Shetty, Sir Anthony James Leggett, Kevin Warwick, and Prof. Timothy Poston.

As a forum for interaction between students and industry, Engineer has proved to be successful, with corporates providing sponsorship and conducting workshops and talks during the three day event. Previous sponsors and mentors included the GE, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, AMD, Tata Motors, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Reliance industries, Dell, Ansys, Novell, McAfee, the Indian Space Research Organization, Thoughtworks and Biocon.

Incident

Incident, (also known as Inci) the national level cultural festival is a celebration of the multitude of talents and experiences of students. Incident was first conducted in 1980 and has grown over the years to become one of the largest cultural festivals in South India and attracts student participation in huge numbers.

Held over five days, the festival encompasses a gamut of events, ranging from dance and dramatics, music, painting, fashion and quizzing. In addition, the Incident Pro-Nite features top Indian bands (Incident 2010 Golden Edition featured KK, Motherjane, Led Zepplica, DJ Nyk, DJ Oliver Moldan and Dualdrive Incident 2009 featured DJ Nikhil Chinappa and Kunal Ganjawala, Incident 2008 featured KK, Incident 2007 featured Raghu Dixit and Indian Ocean, Incident 2006 featured Euphoria whereas Incident 2005 featured Parikrama, Yell-O and Vinapra) and draws crowds from all around India. Events are conducted and judged by professionals. Incident has a heritage of literary events, named QuizFest.

Other activities

Students organise treks and trips to scenic hills and waterfalls nearby. Some of the waterfalls and treks include Sita Falls, Agumbe, Jog Falls, Joomla Theertha, Kodachadri, Arshinagundi falls, Hanumangundi falls and Kumara parvata.

Former principals

• A. S. Adke

See Also

• List of Indian engineering college rankings

External links

• Official website
• Alumni website
• Student-alumni interaction website
• Alumni website
• Bay Area NITK alumni network website
• Official Website of E-FOREA ( E-Cell of NITK )
• Official Website of Rotaract Club