Bidding adieu to an academician who has impacted lifestyles of not just the students & faculty but PEC's Alums too
Tejinder Singh Bedi
@tsinghbedi
A PhD from the University of Maryland, former Director/VC from the LNM Institute of Information Technology at Jaipur & last posted at IIT, Kanpur, Dr. Dheeraj Sanghi joined PEC on a loan as its Director in Jan 2019.
Although, it looks just like a yesterday that he had moved in to take over the reins of the institute, looking back at the string of contributions made by him in running the affairs of the college backed by his undisputed stature as an institute builder, I for one feel he has already accomplished over half a decade’s value addition in almost every facet of the working of our college in a very short time already.
Its his cultural outreach with all stakeholders to the institute that did not let the evolving lifestyle of academic activities and overall engagement of all members of the PEC’s large family dampen even a wee bit during the most daunting phase of COVID outbreak, too.
Here was one leader who made the best use of webinars, online teaching, virtual global alumni meet ups, virtual convocations and guest lectures from some of the most distinguished speakers on various subjects covering a holistic range of social as well as academic subjects.
I must say, every time I got to meet him at the Campus or during his fleeting visits to Delhi, I found in him a burning desire to launch something new for the college to keep enhancing its glory, as if in a mission mode.
It has been only for his open-hearted outreach to most alumni of the college that the institute today stands connected with over ten thousand achievers of national or international stature from among its estimated strength of 25000 across the globe and up from just a couple of hundreds only until about two years ago.
The institute organized its first ever global alumni meet in its 100th year under his leadership only which witnessed nearly a thousand alums descend with spouses in the campus from almost every part of the world,.
Dr. Sanghi has truly been a great change leader for PEC and will be missed even more by most of the alums who could meet him in person during his short stay.
For the institute too, it is going to be a big loss that he is leaving in the middle ofits 100th year but one only hopes that the momentum of growth coupled with a cultural rejuvenation imparted by his "personal perseverance or dheeraj - as one may put it" - will not be allowed to dampen by his incoming successor!
I take this opportunity to wish him and his family even a more exciting time with astounding success in all of his new assignments ahead and do hope that he would remain in touch with all his well wishers for a long time ahead too!
Besides teaching Dr. Sanghi had held several important leadership positions at IIT, Kanpur & Delhi both in the past and is well known for a number of his out of box initiatives, ideas in new program structures including double major, minor, for enhancing automation of all academic processes, supporting CS+X programs, establishing the first alumni cell at IIT, Delhi besides pursuing an aggressive agenda to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship with the students spending at least a semester in industry internship - all areas of his great interest, in which he has also been addressing faculty and leadership of a large number of colleges/universities of and on.