BEST PRACTICES OF THE COLLEGE

 

Best Practice 1

1. Title: Sustainable and Effective Solid Waste Management System on Campus
2. Objective of the Practice: The institution produces a significant amount of leaf and paper waste. To prevent this waste from going into the dhelo and adding to the city’s waste aggregates, the institution recycles it to produce useful products. This practice is a step towards decentralized waste management, which is a step towards zero waste management. For this purpose, the college has set up a recycling unit in an area of 163.5 sq. m. This unit has one section that houses equipment for recycling paper, including a paper pulper, univat, hydraulic press, and another section that has equipment to process fallen leaves into manure.
3. The Context: Delhi produces heaps of solid waste that are collected from dhelo and sent to landfills at Okhla, Gazipur, and Azadpur. The heap is becoming bigger every day and creating a lot of pollution around. Central processing also becomes difficult and challenging. Therefore, there is a need to set up decentralized waste management systems by institutions, offices, and resident welfare associations.
4. The Practice: The institution produces lots of fallen leaves and used papers/newspapers/magazines. The solid waste is collected in a segregated manner. Recycling vendors collect the newspapers and magazines of the library with which the college signs an MoU every year. The amount of newspaper/magazines sold is redeemed as ream of A4 size recycled paper, notebooks, pens, etc. Some amount of used paper and cartons are recycled in the DRC Recycling Unit. These are stored as sheets or converted into products like carry bags and paintings. The fallen leaves are shredded by the shredder machine into 5mm pieces. Microbial culture containing bacteria and fungus is added to this heap to initiate decomposing. Between 21-40 days, it is converted into bio-fertilizers that are either used within the institution or sold to other institutions or individuals.
5. Evidence of Success

Recycling Unit Activity in DRC (2015-2023)

Activity			Academic Year
	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	Total
Paper Recycled Off Campus  (Kg)	320	1758	0	8210	1810	894	24,982
Paper Recycled On Campus (Kg)	4	5	30	8	80	250	377
Leaves Recycled On Campus (Kg)	1251	1038	1605	1651	1828	1338	11211
Manure Made on Campus From Leaves (Kg)	2502	2077	3210	3303	3656	2675	22423
Recycled Paper Made On Campus (No)	390	500	427	45	300	450	2502
Folders Made from recycled Papers (No)	48	52	40	0	0	100	271
Carry Bags made from recycled Papers (No)	10	50	1168	1118	116	150	2617
Students trained at for Paper making and products in Recycling Unit (No)	200	218	202	25	325	850	1920
Students trained at for Manure making in Recycling Unit (No)	0	0	0	0	0	1273	1273
Workshop held for students/Community training on waste management (No)	0	8	0	0	0	2	11

 

Problems Encountered and Resources Required: Payment to the recyclers needs to be arranged. One of the recyclers’ payments is made by the college. The payment of the other recycler is partially paid by the amount earned by the recycling unit, and the rest is paid by the convener of the recycling unit. There is a need for dedicated positions for recyclers as decentralized waste management is the need of the day.

 

Best Practice 2

Title: Learning Beyond Classrooms: Empowering Through Holistic Education

Objective of The Practice: To provide a well-rounded education that goes beyond traditional academics, fostering the empowerment of all students, with a particular focus on enhancing the skills, knowledge, and opportunities for female students.

Context: The world is changing very rapidly which requires that students are provided with skills to deal with challenges. We recognize the importance of equipping our students with practical skills, research experience, and critical thinking abilities to excel in their academic and professional pursuits.

Practice:

(1) Skill Development: The Skill Development Programme Committee of the college invites proposals from faculty members for in-house SDPs of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature to be conducted during the summer, winter, and mid-semester breaks. After a review of the proposals a number of programs are selected to be offered to enhance students' practical abilities in communication, leadership, and problem-solving.

(2) ICT Courses: Under the aegis of SDP Committee, all the departments organise two days SDPs on ‘Enhancing Learning through ICT’. ICT tools and applications are employed to solve problems in mathematics/ statistics/computer science/commerce through appropriate software and programming skills, like Tally, SPSS, LaTeX, Mathematica, R, TORA etc.

(3) Research Involvement: Well-equipped and technologically advanced laboratories and resource centres such as Zebrafish Lab Facility, Drosophila Resource Centre, and Psychology Resource Centre (sponsored by Star Innovation Project -University of Delhi and UGC) facilitate departmental projects which provide experiential learning to the students.

(4) Internship Opportunities: On-campus internships in Zebrafish and Drosophila labs, as well as research opportunities are provided through the Psychological Resource Centre.

(5) Add-on Course: The college offers add-on courses on 7 foreign languages, ‘Legal Literacy, Awareness and Aid’ etc.

(6) Every department organises speaker sessions and interactions with subject scholars and industry experts to synergise theoretical knowledge with real life applications.

Evidence of Success:

• Around 60 in-house Skill Development Programmes benefiting more than 2000 students (discipline-specific and interdisciplinary) have been conducted over the past 8 years to enhance students' skills to develop creative ideas, critical thinking, and inter/multidisciplinary understanding of the subject.
• Around 1000 students are trained annually in ICT Tools and use of Google Classroom/e-contents/e-resources to enable them to use advanced resources for enriched learning.
• Around 60 discipline-based and interdisciplinary workshops and conferences have benefited around 65 faculty members and 500 students.
• More than 2000 students have participated in the add-on courses.

Problems Encountered and Resources required:

• Resource constraints limit the scale and scope of training programs and internship opportunities.