RMD Engineering College Date:   Thursday , January 12, 2017 Discovering the Future Talents from the Rural Mass Located about 35 km from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Ravilla Munirathinam Durgadevi Engineering College (RMDEC) contributes more to the training of rural folk as social obligation and provides an efficient academic and research environment. Established in 2001 by the Sri Swaminatha Naidu Educational Trust as a Telugu minority institution by its Founder Chairman, R.S. Munirathinam, RMDEC stands out from the various other engineering colleges in the education process, training and placement. \"Individual attention, counseling, industry interaction and industry specific placement training to each student are the specialties our college. We are committed to effective planning, implementation and monitoring of quality on all fronts ensuring job ready students with excellent technical knowledge and good training in life skills,\" says R.S. Munirathinam. Despite being an institution that imparts technical education to the rural population, RMDEC interacts with corporate companies and research institutions to work on collaborative projects by establishing Centers of Excellence with active participation from industries and trains the faculty by industry experts through, train the trainer model. RMDEC thus improves the quality of teaching learning process by imparting domain specific skills to the students and transforming the students into better professionals. \"As we are an affiliated institution under the Anna University, Chennai, we cannot change syllabus and the curriculum. However, we have formed Academic Advisory Council with experts from industries and senior academicians in order to accommodate the changing trends of industries,\" claims R.S. Munirathinam. From the advice and recommendations of these councils, the institute conducts additional training programs and value addition programs to improve the technical skills and life skills of the students. The management of RMDEC has signed MoUs with 18 industries including IBM, CTS, Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Mitsubishi and many more. While, many of these companies offer jobs and internship to the students, this approach has helped the recruiters to reduce the time of training since they can directly employ RMDEC students in real time projects and can make them work from day one. Last year alone, these companies provided over 108 Internships and the institute saw a considerable increase in the salary received by the students. \"Our placement record is more than 80 percent during the past six years. Last year, 630 students were placed out of 680 students registered for placements, which means 92.65 percent of the students were placed. The maximum salary of 6 lakhs per annum was offered by Amazon Development Center India and 6.5 lakhs per annum was offered by Zoho Corporation India,\" claims R.S. Munirathinam. To make the campus placement more efficient, RMDEC follows a structured training program from first year onwards. Pre-placement activities like Aptitude refresher training programs, Mock Aptitude tests in HR, and Skill Rack mock online tests are conducted. Training programs of specific companies like Zoho-Enrich program, TCS - Campus Commune, Infosys - Campus Connect and Cognizant certified student program are given to the students to increase the placements. Industrial visits and In-plant training are arranged to expose the industrial environment to the students. While value added courses are conducted to acquire technology trends in the core competencies, intensive training is given in C, C++ and JAVA to all students of all branches to enhance software skills. In addition to the highly effective pre-placement activities, the institute has its own Entrepreneurship Development Center (IEDC) and the Entrepreneur Development Cell (EDC), which have been established with the financial aid from DST and AICTE respectively to encourage entrepreneur activities. Students are helped to implement their innovative ideas and develop prototype model by sponsoring to their projects and they are encouraged to apply for patents through these cells. \"So far, EDC has published two patents and has conducted entrepreneurship awareness programs with the experts from industries, financial institutions, government organizations and successful entrepreneurs for the benefit of the students,\" says R.S. Munirathinam. Today, with all the necessary infrastructure and intellectual capital to provide a world-class education to the rural mass, RMDEC has many futuristic plans. One among them is the creation of more Centers of Excellence and tie-ups with leading Industries to maintain a close link with the industries, which will provide a time to time update on the Industrial modernization and understanding of the consequent workforce demand. A scientific strategy to strengthen the academic performance of the students to excel in the university designed curriculum and simultaneously imparting them training in line with the industrial need by way of introducing more value added courses with optimized technical exposure will be one of the major agendas of the institute in the coming years. \"We are convinced beyond doubt that a greater academic strategy and instantaneous course correction in the areas of academics and research is essential to cope up with the ever-changing industrial scenario. Thus, we have devised a concrete road map focusing on the needs of today\'s education,\" concludes R.S. Munirathinam. R. S. Munirathinam, Founder Chairman R. S. Munirathinam, the Founder-Chairman of R.M.D. Engineering College is well known for his philanthropic attitude and service. He was elected as Member of the Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu state three times. He envisioned a technological revolution and committed himself to establishing educational institutions to foster technical and higher education. He is a renowned educationalist in Tamil Nadu, for whom, quality is the way of life. He is compassionate and an embodiment of modesty with whom everyone feels easy to associate with and is undeterred in his conviction to execute to perfection anything that is for common good. The lush green environment, the expansive buildings, the well-equipped laboratories and the unparalleled discipline of the students stand testimony and shining examples of his unique style of management.