My Years at B. E. College as a Teacher

My Years at B. E. College as a Teacher
Prof. Arun Deb, 1957 Civil Engineering

It was June 1958, after my graduation in Civil Engineering in 1957, I was working as a Trainee Engineer at a construction site to build West Bengal Thermal Power Station at Durgapur, and at that time I received a letter from our Professor A. C. Roy, the Principal, B. E. College. The letter, mentioned about my good academic records in the college and offered me to join B. E. College as a faculty and gave an indication that within one or two years, I will be sent to USA for higher studies. Immediately, I decided to accept the offer, and not to continue my present work after the completion of my training period at the end of June 1958.

The following week, I came to see Principal A.C. Roy at B.E. College. After some initial conversations, he phoned Professor Naresh C. Bose, the Head of the Civil Engineering department requesting him to come to Principal’s office. Principal Roy told Professor Bose pointing me as a new faculty at the Civil Engineering. This started my career as a teacher at B.E. College Civil Engineering Department. Professor Bose gave me the teaching load that was initially allocated as a Teacher X. At that time Principal Roy recruited some excellent engineers and teachers such as Professors Bimal Bose in Electrical Engineering, Parthasarathy Banerjee, Sunil Nandy, Sunil Roy, Jiten Kar and Chiranjib Sarkar, all in Civil Engineering, Debajyoti Aichbhaumik in Architecture, and Bimal Sen in Applied Mechanics and others.

My days as a teacher at B.E. College started in July 1958. One year back those who were my teachers and now became my colleagues. Initially, I had a barrier, but with the help of my senior teachers, I gradually become very cordial with all the senior teachers.

At that time, though only a very few faculty members had a PhD degree, our academic atmosphere at the College was very bright. Most of the faculty members were eager to pursue higher studies and conduct research. This academic atmosphere was created by the College with collaborations of some American Professors, who joined the College as a part of the Teachers Exchange program funded by Technical Cooperation Mission (TCM) of the United States Government. Most probably, B. E. College is the only engineering institution selected for this program in India to develop excellence in engineering education in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin. Among them were Professor Pickett in Structural Engineering, Professor Villemonte in Hydraulics and Professor Benedict in Electrical Engineering. They were very instrumental in enhancing laboratories and developing postgraduate education in B.E. College. Professor Villemonte developed a modern hydraulics laboratory. Professor Pickette taught us numerical computing and FORTRAN Language for computer programming. This helped us not only in our Ph.D. research computation and analysis, but also in our future research. Under this program, many faculties from B. E. College went primarily to the University of Wisconsin to pursue post graduate education in engineering.

Principal A. C. Roy kept his word, and in February 1960, me along with Arun Roy from Electrical Engineering and Professor Santijiban Mukherjee from Mechanical Engineering were sent to the University of Wisconsin and Parthasarathy Banerjee from Civil Engineering was sent to University of Illinois. I was assigned to specialize in Water and Sanitary Engineering and Parthasarathy Banerjee was assigned to specialize in Soil Mechanics.

My life at the University of Wisconsin was very hard but enjoyable. We arrived at the University of Wisconsin in the month of February and found the beautiful campus of the university was covered with snow. In one-year Parthasarathy Banerjee and I completed a master’s degree and came back to B. E. College with new vigor and energy. I started to develop a new environmental engineering laboratory and new courses and curricula in environmental engineering including master’s program. Parthasarathy Banerjee also developed a geotechnical laboratory and post graduate courses. Later, after returning from the USA, Professors Sunil Roy and Professor Sunil Nandi developed graduate curriculums in highway and traffic engineering and enhanced the Structural engineering respectively. The TCM program by then changed the academic atmosphere of B. E. College with all the young, dedicated, and energetic teachers returning from the USA. Professor Bimal Sen, and Professor Chiranjib Sarkar also returned in 1959 after completion of master’s degree. In India at that time, B. E. College was one of the topmost engineering colleges. Government of India started Engineering Teachers Training Program at the B. E. College. Many would-be teachers joined this program from all over the country at B.E. College and completed their master’s degree and Teachers Training Program. This program then produced many excellent engineering teachers in the country. During this period, B.E. College produced many brilliant teachers and scholars such as Professors Sukomal Talapatra, Santimoy Chakraborty, Suman Dasgupta, Dipak Sengupta, Kalidas Banerjee, Prodyot Kumar Basu, Amitabha Ghosh, Gautam Dasgupta, Amal Kumar Datta, Kalidas Banerjee, Sushital Roy, Chitta Mahato, Dipten Dasgupta, Prodip Roy and others.

At that time, India started improving and expanding technical education with more engineering colleges. In 1960s, Durgapur Reginal Engineering College (was known as R.E. College, and now NIT), and Jalpaiguri Engineering College started from scratch with the help of the B. E. College faculties. In this vigorous academic environment, most of the young faculties started research on their own to complete PhD degrees. At that time almost all the faculty used to live on the campus, as a result working for research at nights was common.

In early 1960’s Professor Kalyan Banerjee of Civil Engineering department became the first PhD in Civil Engineering of Calcutta University and probably the first engineering Ph.D. among all Indian Universities.

After that Professor Amitabha Bhattacharya and Professor Dhruba Nath Roy, both from Mechanical Engineering, Professor Bimal Bose from Electrical Engineering, Professor Bimal Sen from Applied Mechanics completed their Ph.Ds. and after 7 years of struggle, I completed my PhD in Civil/Environmental Engineering in 1968 and Professor Chiranjib Sarkar also completed at the same time as me. At that time there was no research funding, and no research scholars were available. With the help of a small workshop staff, we had to build our experimental setups. There were no computers and no internet available at that time. One thing I should mention here that with the assistance of the American professors at B. E. College, the first computer an IBM 1620 machine was scheduled to come at the B. E. College from USA in early 1960s. However, the Government of West Bengal did not agree to spend Rupees 1 Lakh per year for its maintenance. The computer then went to IIT Kanpur. That was a great setback for B. E. College in engineering teaching and research. Our researchers had no choice but to go to IIT Kanpur and stay weeks to complete computations for their research work. Overall, the decade of the 1960s was the Golden Period of B. E. College.

In 1965, Principal A.C. Roy appointed me the Superintendent of the Pandya Hall. At that time Pandya Hall was a Post Graduate Hostel. Very famous alumni such as Professor Amitabha Ghosh, Professor Gautam Dasgupta, Professor Sukomal Talapatra, Professor Dipak Sengupta among others were at the Pandya Hall.

The relationship of teachers with students was also changed and became very cordial with the infusion of many young teachers. We used to mix with the students very openly in all sport and other activities. Homes of faculty members were open to students after college hours. Students often invited teachers in their hostel feasts. I used to play Table Tennis with the students at their hostels. In later years, many of our students became very renowned engineers and teachers in their respective fields. We feel very proud of them.

Social life for teachers in the campus was beautiful. We used to visit each other’s home often. We had an excellent Teachers’ club and a Professors’ Club. We used to play tennis and badminton in the evenings. I was very active in these clubs and served as a secretary for several years. We also had Campus Durga Puja each year. I was also involved and was secretary of the Campus Durga Puja Committee. During the Durga Puja days everybody in the campus used to have lunch sitting together side by side irrespective of the status and ranks.

We were lucky to have our excellent teachers. We owe a lot to our teachers. I would like to express my regards and pranams to all my teachers. All my teachers (Professors Santosh Kumar Mukherjee, Asim Kumar Mukherjee, Kalyan Kumar Banerjee, Bimal Sen, Paresh Nath Chatterjee, Anil Kumar Chowdhury, Amitabha Ghosh Dastidar, Khaunish Chandra Roy, Sankar Kumar Sen, Durga Banerjee, Kamada Kanta Majumdar, Probodh Kumar Chatterjee, S. C. Chakraborty, Abani Kumar De, Nemai Neogi, G. C. Basak) are no longer here. Very recently, our dear Professor Chiranjib Kumar Sarkar also passed away. He lived at Kolkata, at the same place as I live when I come to Kolkata.

The contributions of Principal A.C. Roy were enormous in developing B. E. College to a new high standard. He was a visionary, an excellent teacher, a good administrator and overall, an excellent human being. During his time at the B.E. College, he helped many people. In fact, he was the architect in helping me in finding a path in my career. I am indebted to him.

Since I left the College in 1971, I was always in contact with the B. E. College faculty and administration. I feel very proud that with my initiative, Late Professor Amal Datta and now Professor Anirban Gupta of the Civil Engineering Department in conjunction with Lehigh University of USA, and Water for People of USA, developed a world-renowned Arsenic Remediation System for villages of West Bengal. This project is still helping more than 250,000 villagers to receive arsenic free water. The project has become a model of sustainable projects and received many national and international awards. This project brought our Alma Mater to the fore front of social giving back. I feel very proud that I could involve myself in developing the first Local area Network (LAN), Alumni Seminar Hall, the Swimming Pool and improvement of the Gymnasium for my Alma Mater.

I spent 18 years at the B. E. College Campus both as a student and as a teacher. These 18 years of my formative student and professional career significantly helped me in my future career abroad in the UK and the USA. This period of life is most precious to me.
I owed a lot to my Alma Mater, B.E. College.