What you see inside India’s largest private university is a massive strength of 35000+ students coming from 60 different countries, all united by quality education with some super world class infrastructure and a 4000 strong team of faculty and admin. We had a brilliant opportunity to engage with Rashmi Mittal – Pro Chancellor of Lovely Professional University – and understand how the mammoth township inside is run and what drives them to do this every day? How do they see challenges and what measures do they take to ensure the whole system runs like one organism?
What makes LPU a preferred destination for faculty from different streams to jump in?
Among the many, I feel our transparent hiring system, and constant engagement with the faculty to encourage them to guide as many students as they can for PhDs, a fair grading system to give them a score they can check with and highest drive to ensure they are growing while they are working with us are some good reasons.
How do they grow when here?
At a teaching level, our seniors are constantly giving the faculty feedback on what’s doing great and what needs improving and hand holding them to make sure new road maps for growth are co-created and reviewed at regular intervals to ensure the faculty can see their learning curve and feel motivated to be on this journey.
What is their incentive to stay in LPU, considering Jalandhar is a small place, with less access and facilities?
We understand this challenge and compensate by paying good salaries – usually a margin above the market rate to ensure we get the best and then within the campus we have created world class infrastructure of state of the art labs, a premium digitized learning environment, and a fully automated online communication dashboard for teaching and communication – making the experience and exposure absolutely top notch within the category.
Hundreds join your team every year and many of them leave too. Why would you say this is?
While we are one of the most highly preferred education institutions to work with in North India, people also know when it comes to performance we don’t take average as a benchmark. So people either love us or hate us. Love us – if they love global exposure, growth and high expectation work environment that pushes them to constantly do better. Hate us – if they are old school and don’t like change. Having said this many people re-join us after a few years and this is because of the infrastructure, massive student strength and our easy work culture that brings them back in.
Can you share more about your work culture?
At LPU when it comes to communication with management, our faculty and admin have direct access to me and the entire senior management team. My doors are open and I see an average of 15 to 20 people from the various departments every day – to solve an issue, to share an idea or to discuss new curriculum initiatives and recruitment opportunities for our students. We highly encourage our faculty to pursue their Doctorate Degree when they join us, so they are learning and growing their careers while working with us. We believe our teachers will transform the students only when they continue to research, learn and grow each day.
At ‘Sannidhya’ – our annual team event we recognize our high performers in every department and acknowledge their contribution to the institution. They are our super stars who inspire the rest of the teams to pull up their socks and chase bigger milestones each year.
A free hand for any of our faculty or admin to join other departments and contribute with their time and talent is another feather in our cap – making it very interesting for everyone to jump in and do their best in different areas. We are known to change syllabus overnight when we get guidance tips from our placement partners, to ensure our students are job ready and well read about the latest technologies and systems.
There are a zillion other initiatives that this university takes up in an effort to constantly grow and beat their best. When asked what drives them – Rashmi smiles and says – “our expectations for where we want to be, how we want to be perceived and what we want to do for our students grow each day, so we truly have miles to go before we sleep.”
LPU is a great example of playing big at a micro level to project a great macro view of an organization that has grown exponentially over the last decade. And their core strength comes from engaging with their people constantly and having an open and honest communication channel.
