Lalbaba College, Howrah
117, GT Road, Bally,,
Howrah
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The Lalbaba College stands on a plot of 1.56 acres located in an urban setting in the vicinity of Kolkata, being only 6 kilometers from the city center of Kolkata. Being close to a well established metropolitan city like Kolkata that is also a major academic and commercial center of the country, as well as being adjacent to the industrial areas of Howrah has many locational advantages.
Another important locational feature of the college is that it is very near Belur Math, the world famous monastic organization established by Swami Vivekananda.
The goals of the college have been to provide degree level collegiate education to students of the area. The mission of the college is stated in the spirit of the founder spiritual leader Lalbaba to provide a collegiate educational complex 'where along with university curriculum sincere efforts should also be made to enable the learners to think clearly and act rightly with an ultimate aim to make possible the social progress through the manifestation of perfection inherent in man.'
The college began in 1964 with B.A. and B.Com. pass courses, later added B.Sc. pass courses and has steadily grown to become a three faculty college with three thousand students and Honours courses in Bengali, English, Philosophy, History, Political Science, Economics, Accountancy and Geography. Science faculty includes Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics as general courses.
Other subjects available are Sanskrit, Hindi and Education.
The college is an undergraduate teaching institution and gets students mostly from the middle and lower middle class families of the adjacent industrialized regions and neighbouring agricultural belt.
The college has 33 permanent teachers and 28 part-time teachers, the total strength being 61 teachers. This includes 15 Ph.D. and 10 M.Phil among the permanent teachers, and 1 Ph.D., 2 M.Phil. among part-time teachers. Non-teaching staff numbers 19.
Undergraduate student strength is 2894 including 86 from other states. Drop out rate is 13%. Success rate is good being above 80%. Of the 2000-01 batch, three students secured first class Honours amongst the 266 who passed.
The unit cost of education of the college is Rs.1013.00 without salary component and Rs.4895.00 including salary component.
The temporal plan of the college is annual.
Support services available include a Central library with 16,941 books and a good number of journals. The college has 32 computers : 14 in the department of commerce with internet connection, 8 in the administrative sections of the college office, 1 in the library, 1 in the teacher's lounge and 3 in the department of physics. There is a Computer Centre in collaboration with a local private firm. Other support services include canteen, cheap store, auditorium and some sports facilities.
The college volunteered to be assessed by National Assessment and Accreditation Council, Bangalore and submitted the Self Study Report. NAAC constituted a PEER TEAM consisting of Prof. Devdas Kakati, former Vice-Chancellor of Dibrugarh University as Chairman, Prof. U.C. Goswami of the Department of Zoology, Gauhati University as Member and Prof. M. D. P.Rao , Former Principal, Khallikote College, Berhampore, Orissa as Member Co-Ordinator. The Peer Team visited the college from 30 th September, 2004 to 2nd October,2004 to validate the data provided in the Self Study Report. The Peer Team has gone through the relevant documents, visited all the departments, library, the Computer Centre and support services, interacted with the Principal, teachers, students, non-teaching staff, parents and alumni. Based on the above exercise and keeping in view of the seven criteria identified by NAAC, the Peer Team has drafted the report in the following paragraphs.
Criterion I : Curricular Aspects
Lalbaba College is an undergraduate co-education college functioning under the rules and regulations laid down by Calcutta University to which the college is affiliated. Initially, the college started with a few arts and commerce subjects i.e. Bengali and Accountancy.
The college offers full-time three year degree programmes in Bachelor of Arts, Science and Commerce. Programme options available in Arts are varied. Both Honours and General Courses are offered in Bengali, English, History, Philosophy and Political Science. Only General course is offered in Hindi, Sanskrit and Education. Programme options are also available in Bachelor of Science. Honours and General programmes are available in Geography and Economics. Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics are taught as general courses only. Honours programme in accounting and finance is available besides regular general course for Bachelor of Commerce stream.
Students enjoy limited horizontal mobility as they can change elective optional subjects within a month after the commencement of classes.
This being an affiliated college has no freedom to have its own syllabus. It follows the syllabus designed by the Calcutta University. However, some senior members of the college participate in designing and updating the syllabus of parent university as members of Board of Studies.
It approximately takes six to nine months to introduce a new programme of study. Limited infrastructure of the college is a bottleneck for introducing new courses. However in 2000-2001, the college has introduced Honours in Economics. No self financing courses are offered by the college.
Academic audit of the college has been conducted by Calcutta University where several criteria like students' strength, attendance, faculty position, infrastructure, classes taken by faculty, methods adopted for student evaluation and examination results have been reviewed.
The college puts equal emphasis on knowledge and skills in its programme options.
The college makes efforts to achieve its mission and goals through co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, with emphasis on personal touch , healthy faculty-student interaction and equal opportunity to all categories.
Criterion II : Teaching - Learning and Evaluation
In the year 2003-2004 the college has 253 working days of which 213 are the teaching days. Students are selected for admission into various courses through their academic record.
There is a consistent system of assessing students' knowledge and skills for a particular programme after admission. Apart from test examination and annual examination, regular home assignments are given, class tests are also conducted periodically to make it easier to seggregate the students into different academic levels so that weaker students can be paid greater attention. Most of the full-time teachers are assigned at least one class as tutorial to help the weaker students.
The college arranges 'parent - teacher counseling' subsequent to publication of the results of the annual examination.
Advanced learners are given opportunity to present topics within the purview of the syllabus before his classmates and in presence of teachers consistent with student centric learning.
Each department in the college prepares a teaching plan at the beginning of the year where the entire syllabus is distributed among the faculty members and a time frame is chalked out. The faculty members unitise these assignments which serves as a guideline to complete the syllabus within a stipulated time frame.
The college supplements the lecture method of teaching by interactive participation of students through questions and answers, black board use by students, group discussions, etc. overhead projectors and LCD available in the college are made use of by the teachers. Immediately after the commencement of classes, the teachers of the respective departments communicate the students about the evaluation methods followed by the college and university.
Field work, study tour, project work and dissertations are undertaken depending on the nature of the subject.
Analysis of the results of the university examinations is carried out to take immediate remedial measures. The college also monitors the attendance of the students and students with poor attendance are not allowed to appear at the university examination.
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