Leadership

The University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya has put in place a well-defined, participative, and pluralistic ethos to carry on the management and administration. Ingrained within the institutional mechanisms and processes is the spirit of decentralization which disseminates instead of concentrating powers in a central authority. This, in turn, facilitates more transparent, stakeholder-friendly governance within the university.

At the apex level, the decentralization follows from the Office of the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, Registrar, Deans, Heads of Department, Directors, and other high officials. All of them operate the crux of their respective organizational verticals and solicit, delegate, and involve the various stakeholders within their respective verticals. This ensures effective implementation of statutory orders and meeting objectives and achievements of desired goals.

However, the spirit of decentralization and participation is manifest to a greater degree through a bottom-up approach from the grassroots level. Power and responsibility, accountability, and participation are devolved from the bottom of the organizational structure. This effectively ensures that feedback and observations emanate from the grassroots which in turn help in sharpening our performance, optimizing our goals, and achieving the right priorities with requisite course correction based on ground-level feedback.

This dual intra-institutional decentralization ensures that the priorities of the university as highlighted in the institutional plan and vision are collectively delegated, executed, and achieved. This decentralized spirit ensures effective participation of various levels of stakeholders of the university starting from support staff to students, faculty to high officials, administrative staff as well as consultants to feel a sense of belonging, identify their responsibilities and accountabilities and thus contribute collectively to realize the vision of achieving a world-class institution through unveiling excellence.

The University has put in various platforms, formal and informal to facilitate participative involvement, feedback of all stakeholders and the institutional mechanisms ensure that the highest officials take into account the grassroots feedback and involve the diverse stakeholders to achieve the collective goals.  This includes platforms such as the Board of Management, Academic Council, Board of Governors, IQAC, and so on. These various platforms and institutional mechanisms operate within a larger perspective and philosophy of stakeholder participation, involvement, and collective action.

Additionally, one distinctive facet of USTM is that in addition to the stakeholders within the institution, we are also of the firm belief that external stakeholders such as intellectuals, visionaries, and leaders also play a pivotal role in determining and achieving the goals of the university. As USTM posits itself as an institution of excellence nurtured by the collective intellectual capital of society, academia, and society, thus, it is only natural that we seek to incorporate and imbibe the best practices, feedback, and inputs from leaders and academicians, experts and intelligentsia who have, continue to and shall continue in the future to participate in our collective march towards emerging as a world-class institution.

In a nutshell, we may state that USTM exemplifies the best practices in participatory and decentralized governance through the involvement of intra-institutional and extra-institutional stakeholders.