Chitkara University: Digitally Empowering Students to Build a Successful Data Career

Chitkara University, Punjab is a NAAC A+ accredited and private state university approved by UGC and state legislation. The University is ranked #2 in ARIIA Ranking by Govt. of India at the national level in the private universities category for its research and innovation achievements. With nearly 16000 students and 1200 faculty members in 93 programs of different disciplines such as engineering, business, pharmacy, healthcare, nursing, maritime, computer applications, education, hotel management, culinary arts, and mass media, the University has carved its niche in academic and research excellence. Nearly 2214 research papers in Scopus indexed journals, 183 start-ups, 159 international partnerships, and 162 industry partners make it a strong team of experts and practitioners for keeping the University on high ranks and achievement targets. The university strongly adheres to the requirements of SDGs by the United Nations. We have adopted 5 villages and all our co-curricular & extension activities around SDGs are promoted & done in these villages in the areas such as climate, sustainability, environment, green energy, employability, infrastructure, education, water, renewable sources, etc.

"Explore your potential" is the punch line that describes the philosophy of Chitkara University and substantiates the claims with top rankings at International level QS University Rankings and Times Higher Education.

The university has a clear focus on skilling and employability in emerging fields such as AI, ML, Cloud, Data engineering, Mortgage, Anti Money Laundering, Investment Banking, Digital Marketing, Fintech, Business Analytics, Data Science, Culinary Arts, marine engineering, and vocational programs.

The vision at Chitkara is "To be a globally recognized organization promoting academic excellence through interdisciplinary applied research and to expand the realms of knowledge through innovation."

Revolutionary Programs to Boost Data-Driven Business Markets

Chitkara University is one of the first institutions in the region to venture into a full-time MBA and BBA program in Business Analytics along with a B.Tech. program in Data Sciences. Housed at Chitkara University (Punjab campus), COADE is a dedicated research and training hub that supports interdisciplinary empirical research using data on Indian and other emerging markets. Its programs primarily prepare graduates to leverage the power of data analytics onto business trends and predictions. Chitkara's skilled business analytics and data science students are empowered to foster data-driven business decisions. Graduates trained in data analysis drive many important decisions that improve operations and impact businesses big time by identifying the future opportunities that could boost growth. 

The training horizon of the programs at Chitkara spreads over:

• Enabling full use of statistical modelling, artificial intelligence, and data analysis techniques to solve business problems.
• Learning the use of cutting-edge tools and technologies for advanced business analysis and data science.
• Developing the ability to recognize and finalize the findings from a data set, along with an effective presentation of the results using various business intelligence tools.
• Application of the principles of data science for solving real-world problems.
• Experiential learning that provides the right exposure to be market-ready.

Achieving Professional Excellence through Collaboration

Dr. Madhu Chitkara is the Pro-Chancellor of the Chitkara University. She says that the institute's collaboration with market leaders like SAS, Ernst, and Young, Imarticus Learning, Basecamp SkillLabs, 3AI to mention a few; speak about its established academia-industry collaborations with proven industry expertise and capabilities to help organizations transform analytically. According to Madhu, graduates from the institute's programs are serving organizations among the 'Big 4 Audit Firms' like Global Intelligence and Analytics Consulting, Global Business Research and Analytics Services, Global Market Research Firms, and more.

Empowering Students to Climb the Corporate Ladder Earlier

Madhu states that the collaborations with industry leaders help the students get trained in order to calibrate their analytics and data (A&D) strategies by assessing analytical maturity, mapping requirements, aligning change management, and creating a proper roadmap. Their insights and quality training help the students to build trust and confidence. Thus, the institute develops outstanding emerging leaders who team up to deliver promises to all the stakeholders. She adds that by doing so, it plays a critical role in building better working skills for its students, eventually for its recruiters, and also for its communities.

Besides internships, Chitkara University has also introduced an innovative approach of 'LIVE ON-CAMPUS CORPORATE PROJECT' for students during the first quarter of their academic journey, says Madhu. This gives the University a mileage to overtake peers by learning the corporate from campus and climbing the corporate ladder earlier. Students work on technologies like AR, VR, UI, UX, Google Analytics, Knime, etc. The internships at Chitkara fastens the process of understanding in terms of defining SMART goals, addressing quantitative questions on what and how to measure, query handling on utilizing available information, the list doesn't end here. She adds that deciding the name and place of the file to be stored, stamping with dates and notes, and what else – all need to be addressed in a better way of understanding using tools like Power BI, Tableau, etc. As a result, students received a huge positive response during their summer internships and it's a cherry on the top where the chances of PPO have also increased manifolds so far.

Moulding the Industry-Best Candidates with Functional Analytics

Madhu mentions that the institute has rolled out industry-integrated certification courses and simulations on functional analytics modules like HR analytics, healthcare analytics, data visualization, predictive modelling, and more. These programs are governed by its well in place 'Memorandum of Understanding with leading corporations. As mentioned by the management, students trained in these domains are the first choice of e-commerce, telecommunication, giant retailers, media, oil-exploration, and mobile tech business entities who are recruiting data science professionals and that too, with hefty packages that indicate the boom of business analytics and data science.

A Garland of Achievements and Accreditations 

Throughout its illustrious journey of providing an exceptional educational experience designed to help students 'explore their potential', Chitkara University has achieved numerous milestones claims Madhu. Notable achievements of the university include the prestigious ranking of NAAC "A+".

Chitkara University has bagged the 2nd rank in the prestigious Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021 released by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

The institute is among the top in NIRF Rankings. Chitkara University Institute of Engineering and Technology (CUIET) has ranked 113th in the list of Top Engineering Colleges, Chitkara Business School has ranked 54th in the list of Top Management Institutions and Chitkara College of Pharmacy has ranked 35th in the list of Top Pharmacy Institutions.

Chitkara University, Punjab, has achieved the highest rating of 4 Star in the Annual Performance University Category by Institutions' Innovation Council 3.0 for the year 2021-22.

Adversaries that Cascade Opportunities

Madhu presumes that each day, new technology and businesses are being built with the growth of big data. Nonetheless, a major challenge in business analytics posed by big data analytics firms is to figure out which technologies can better match them without new challenges and future threats being added. Another challenge that Chitkara had to confront was the fact that the majority of students were freshers, she says. The institute has plans to roll out executive programs for leveraging their experience and matching it with future demands of knowledge dissemination through the best of the academics.

These challenges cascade to the university as an opportunity to deliver and train its students to the maximum.

Setting Up Future Goals with 'Data' at the Center

Anticipating the future, Madhu opines that, with data being the new 'oil', organizations rely heavily on building capabilities to generate, process, and manage data by integrating disparate systems and applications. Due to the pandemic, most businesses have started online activities and the demand for data analysis has skyrocketed. A study conducted by IBM and Burning Glass Insights showed that in 2020 alone there were 2.7 million job openings for data professionals.

She adds that this makes it obvious that a career in the data profession has grown and is further growing. "The future is around four major elements: data engineering, artificial intelligence, cloud, and design. The management believes that the institutes shall continue focusing on these four elements of growth," concludes Madhu.