Publication

Abstract : Today’s youth is tomorrow’s promise and tomorrow’s promise is our students. It is said that youth period is like soft clay in the hands of a potter. We need to channelize the potentials and technical skills of the students to facilitate the growth of the society and nation. The engineering education should train the students with adequate technological skills and unfold them as best human beings along with a sense of socio-economic and civic responsibility. Today, requirements for engineering programs reflect a movement with a paradigm shift in the existing practices to resolve the current engineering education problems.Many engineering educators see service learning as a way to enhance their programs by exposing students to engineering context, moreovergiving them a chance to develop professional and interpersonal skills. During the process, qualitative and quantitative surveys were done to collect longitudinal data from electrical and electronics engineering undergraduates (n=65) who have been the winners for consecutive two years of National solar vehicle challenge (NSVC) contest. NSVC is an annual contest organized by dynamic motors with a vision to stir young technocrats to make way for India to become the largest renewable energy hub in the world. The pre-test and post-test survey consist of demographics and qualitative questions. The outcome variables analyzed are civic responsibility, eagerness in service participation, knowledge on eco-friendly projects and sustainable thinking level of the engineering undergraduates.Service participation showed significant positive effects on all the outcome measures among 25% of the actively participated engineering undergraduates. In addition, they were technically enhanced to design single /multi sitter, light weighed and efficient solar vehicles.