Prof. Dr. Parvathi Venkatesh, Principal – Mulund College of Commerce, talks about her ideas and the possibilities for students in the years to come in an interview with Shraddha Kamdar
She was the utmost professional in granting me the time for this interview. She offered me the option of meeting her in South Mumbai to save me the trip to Mulund. I anyway asked her to meet at the college campus, and as soon as she came down after delivering her lecture that day, she asked me to walk with her to her office, telling me about her day while we were walking. She also requested her staff to put off the everyday work like signing documents and such for a few minutes, since she wanted to talk to me in peace. It was a pleasure to talk to Prof. Dr. Parvathi Venkatesh – Principal, Mulund College of Commerce. With her vast experience, she was not only looking at student engagement and development at every stage, she was also keen on delivering the study material in the best fitting manner to the kind of student demographic she gets in a particular class. At one point, when she was approached by a staff member for an urgently needed file, she joked introducing me to the person, “She’s come here for a media interview, and I started teaching her Economics!” With that kind of passion, a person can expect to learn a lot from this senior educationist.
“See, as a teacher, I can go beyond the syllabus prescribed by the university, but that depends on the kind of students I have in that particular classroom. The university itself caters to the heterogeneity of the group of colleges affiliated to it, and that is why when the syllabi are framed only the broad areas are mentioned. To what extent these broad topics are taken up in class is up to the teacher,” says Prof. Parvathi, explaining that the students of a commerce college are usually sailing on two boats – one of BCom and the other of chartered accountancy (CA).
Prof. Parvathi’s opinion is that for brining ingenuity within the classroom, the teacher has to decide to widen her own horizons to provide new input into the teaching-learning process. For that, according to her, two things can be done. One, the knowledge base of the student has to widen, and two, the process of transmission of this knowledge to the students within the classroom also needs to develop with time. “After all, a teacher is a life-long student,” she laughs, telling me that a teacher needs to understand that the formative assessment is for the students whereas the summative assessment is of the students.
Going ahead, I tell her that all of this sounds wonderful, and if she could offer a live example from her classroom, it would be easier for our readers to follow. She offers me the freshest example possible, from that morning’s Economics class she had conducted with the third year BCom students. They were all discussing the current Balance of Payments of India, and she asked the students what should happen to the petroleum prices. “The students were of the opinion that since crude oil prices are going down, the government should allow fuel prices to go down as well. I then told them that with the fuel prices going down, effectively all the costs will go down, and inflation will come down as well. The RBI is truly a watchdog of the economy, and the government will not allow the world recession to set into the country. And that is why it will relax the prices of fuel slowly, not at one shot,” she says excitedly. She further informs that last semester they talked of the situation in Greece within the classroom, and they went on to discuss the Eurozone and other aspects way beyond the syllabus.
“See, that’s what I meant when I said that to go beyond the syllabus, I also need those kinds of students. When I go to a different classroom, the capabilities of the students are different, so I have to consider the analytical capability and the absorption capacity of the group of students and engage them accordingly.”
She being one of the key persons in drafting the current credit and grading system for Mumbai University, I had to ask Prof. Parvathi one of my pet questions – why are students so marks-oriented, and is that a good things? “At some point within the education system, we had to think of the rat race and we had to go in for the grading patterns. Marks matter for identifying the meritorious candidates, but in today’s employment world, the marks do not matter much. At that stage, individual capacity matters much more. This is where I train and groom my students to make a different in the industry,” she says. She adds that a general education moulds a student into handling any kind of situation. It widens capability and that makes the students more trainable in a small span of time, according to her, addressing the issue of making graduates ‘more employable’.
This leads out discussion on to the soft skills track, with me asking Prof. Parvathi as to how important does she think these are. She lays a lot of importance to these skills. “The way my students enter a room, ask a question, handle a situation and offer feedback sets them apart. We conduct an Attitudinal and Behavioural Change (ABC) course and an English proficiency course for the students who need it. The management has also subsidized the courses to such an extent that students from all strata of society can participate,” she informs.
Within the last five years, Mulund College of Commerce has seen about 600 students going on to becoming chartered accountants, and more signing up for even other professional courses like company secretaryship (CS). “I am proud to say that this year’s CS topper in the Foundation Course is from our college. We do believe in grooming students for whatever they are inclined towards, even with the public complaining that we run a college like school! But if I do not administer a certain level of discipline in and education institution, where should it be administered?” she says.
Over the last leg of the interview, Prof. Parvathi talks of how some of her students spend their entire higher education life in the College, right from FYJC to MCom, even when the cut-offs are so high. “Students are proud to be part of this college, and much after they graduate, they are proud alumni who look back with fond memories. What more can we want?” she concludes.
