Who do you think is the best teacher in SSN College of Engineering, Chennai, during your course of study there? (p.s.: it can be any teacher, not necessarily from your department)

Dr. C. Aravindan now in SASE http://sase.ssn.edu.in/faculty.php

Being in the mechanical department, one might expect the faculty to be rugged who would punish you even for a small mistake. Fortunately, 90% of the faculty in my department are extremely friendly and they give you a totally different classroom experience. I take immense pride in writing about a professor who has absolutely no reason to be hated by the students. According to me, he is the best HUMAN BEING I have come across my life. He is Dr.M.Suresh. M.E., Ph.D.,  He  handled a session on Engineering Mechanics during our Second semester since our regular course instructor was out of town. He was pretty straightforward, solved a few problems and left immediately after the bell. Initially we were of the opinion that he was very strict. Later on, in the third semester, he handled Fluid Mechanics for us. We just had 2 days as semester holidays and were not in a mood to attend any of the classes scheduled for the day. FM was the first class in our third semester and we were really delighted since he left us free, pitying our plight. Our opinions gradually started to change after a few weeks of attending his classes. We realized that he was the most humble faculty we ever saw in college. I would like to share a few incidents. 1. A friend of mine never used to attend his classes. He would bunk the class and play cricket tournaments with the other department guys. Once he asked us the reason for his continuous absence and we said :sir, he plays cricket all the time. Without asking any further questions, he said, Oh fine. If he loves cricket let him play. Lets not disturb him. (He was not even playing for the college, not even a part of the official team) 2. There was a very tough derivation in FM which I didn't really understand. There were so many others like me. He took special interest to teach each one of us individually the 6 page long derivation. 3. He used to literally WRITE NOTES for us. And that was our bible for all the UTs and eventually the end semester exams . I havent seen any professor write notes for his students. Knowing that we found his notes extremely useful, he took additional efforts to solve TUTORIAL PROBLEMS. He finally compiled all those problems into one single book and distributed to us. 4. He never used harsh words. Not even "Da" or even "Pa". He used to call everyone of us "Neenga", "vaanga", "ponga". 5. He went on to handle Heat and Mass transfer in the 4th semester and he was just brilliant. I used to  bunk a lot of classes. But I made  sure that I attended his classes (at least once in a while :P) We expected him to handle thermal engineering in our 5th semester but unfortunately he was assigned to our juniors. A few of us requested him to somehow come back again to our class. He said this "I really wanna come to Mech- A. I am very lucky to have you all as my students. Your class is very close to my heart. Due to official reasons, I couldnt make it this time. But never mind, I ll always be there to help you out.".  Have you ever heard of a class in mechanical which would come to college during study holidays to learn a specific unit? We guys did. He was an expert in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, and trust me, as many as 40 ppl turned out for the special class which he offered to take during the study hols. Such was our respect to him. Now comes the most emotional part. Suresh sir was given the responsibility to choose four co-ordinators from our class for CRANK X and also the President of the Association of Mechanical Engineering. He initially approached a student and asked him to be the President but due to some personal reasons, this guy turned the  offer down. Instead, this guy wanted to be one among the four co-ordinators. (Treasurer to be more specific). Suresh sir chose two co-ordinators and asked my class to choose the remaining two. He apparently chose the guy who wanted to be the treasurer and announced it in my class. He did all this under the assumption that he has been very close with my class and the students would not object to his decision. He was unaware of the student politics that was going on. This guy who wanted to be the treasurer had some unforeseen problems with his co-hostel mates which stirred up a big agitation in the hostel. This guy was harassed in front of all his classmates, was threatened to be beaten up for making the professor announce his name in the class. He had no other choice but to give up. The agitation was at its peak. The hostelers wrote a big letter to Suresh sir asking him not to give the guy any role of responsibility in CRANK X. Suresh Sir was terribly schocked by this incident. He took responsibility for all this agitation and he gave up the responsibility of choosing the coordinators and the president. He sent a personal mail to all of us. We felt so guilty after reading his mail. Here's an excerpt from his mail "Frankly I was not aware of the problems/misunderstandings you had among yourselves. Otherwise I would not have involved myself. I am sure that some of you would have felt with frustration/irritation/agitation about my unnecessary interference/involvement. I feel guilty for that. I erred in my judgement about taking too much liberty with you. But, I definitely did not take you for granted. Sometimes I feel partly responsible for these unwanted happenings related to CrankX/Mechanical engg. association activities. I simply gatecrashed into your personal activities. I am sorry for whatever happened because of me." An apology wouldnt suffice for the grave sin that we committed. He was so humble even after such an incident. After that day, Whenever I saw him, I felt really embarrassed. He taught me one big lesson for life. He showed me what it is to feel real GUILT. A good teacher should not only teach you his subjects. He must also teach you LESSONS FOR LIFE. I have the greatest respect for this man. After all this struggle, We managed to make CRANK X a big success. On the day of Crank X, Suresh sir said " I am proud of you all. You finally did it". He was enjoying his day, clicking photographs with his Point and Shoot camera. The smile on his face was PRICELESS. We all Love you for who you are sir. _/\_

In my first year of engineering, I found Engineering Graphics really hard (although the course seemed interesting, I had to visualize the diagrams in my mind - which I initially could not). My original lecturer was on a vacation and I had an opportunity to be a part of Prof. Vijay Sekar K.S.' class for a couple of weeks, and that was the best class I had taken at SSN!Learning your fundamentals right is the best thing you can do as a student.

Before I tell the name of the professor who I think is by far the best teacher in SSN, I'd like to tell what qualities in my opinion make a perfect teacher. Qualifications, certifications, paper publications etc are not what make a teacher great. There have been teachers with too many of these but very little quality to empathise with students. In the name of ushering discipline, there have been a handful who've behaved like army officers. If you've seen this Tamil movie Jigarthanda, you'll probably relate to what I say. Any day, earning respect through empathy and humour wins over strict disciplinarian method of teaching. The best teacher in college  has been Venugopal Sir from the Math Department who handled engineering mathematics for 2 weeks. I find none from my own dept. matching upto my standards of how a teacher must be.

Hands down Dr.M Balaji Sir from the EEE department. He is such a nice professor and is very popular in the department.

P.Venugopal padmanaban from maths dept! One of the coolest professors!!

All the teachers of I.T. Dept. except Ms E.M.Malathy!Right from the HOD, all the teachers know their subject, and are efficient. They are good people to interact with, and one can share a good rapport with them.

Divya John or DJ ma'am from Humanities. So down-to-earth and so friendly. The best there ever was and there ever will be.