Thu, 18 Apr, 2024

Hitesh Karki- A Man Who Loves Challenges

By Ankit Pradhan

First of all, I would like to congratulate Hitesh Karki who has been promoted to the position of Chief Academic Officer at DWIT. Hitesh Karki joined DWIT on August 2012 as a part time employee as the Director of Academic Affairs. He then went on to become a full time employee from the month of November in the same year. Mr. Karki is pretty hard to please as he always wants to do more and always strives for perfection. He is always a man on the run and busy seeking areas to improve so that DWIT soon becomes the best CSIT College in the country. In his interview, he said that he really feels great about being promoted, but as great as it feels, he also feels that the responsibility has increased. For him, it’s not only about being promoted, but also about proving that he is really worthy of being given the position he has been given. He also mentioned that the college is planning to initiate many different things in order to help the students build a better career. Hitesh Karki, along with Alok Koirala, the Director of R&D Department, is running a different department of Research and Development (R&D)which, he says, has been introduced to “make the students’ dreams come true”. They are making attempts to provide different extra courses and training to the students so that they become able enough to build their own dream app and sell them to the people outside, with or without the cooperation of the college. If the students require, he says that the college is ready to provide all the necessary resources and investment. It is a non-academic course and it won’t be included in the mark sheet of the students. He also wants to make sure that the best faculty members work at DWIT and that the brightest students from all over Nepal are chosen at DWIT as per their merits. According to him, DWIT will not just produce students having bachelor degrees, but will produce the best employees for the IT companies all over the world. He says, “We all know the education condition of Nepal. What are the toppers doing in Nepal? Just the marks they secure in examinations don’t have value. The work they do counts more than their grades. We can see that everyone has got degrees but when it comes to performance they cannot prove themselves. DWIT has been well known as one of the best IT Colleges in Nepal over a mere period of its establishment. It is well known by its deeds rather than by the advertisements like other CSIT colleges.” Mr. Karki wants to make DWIT Nepal’s number one CSIT college in the coming years and his future plan is to make it the number one college in South-East Asia. As he also comes from an IT background, it is easy for him to fit in the shoes of students and understand their problems. He also knows what will be the best courses to be designed for the students and will be the appropriate non–academic courses for them. He doesn’t want to give Nepal and the world just graduates but wants the leaders in this field to come from DWIT. He also said, “Someday in future there will be time when the students of DWIT will be hired just from the name of the college. However, it is a huge challenge and goal to be obtained. Some of the software companies have already started enquiring about our graduates. It is indeed something to be happy about and proud of. In Nepal,until school days, parents feel proud to say that their children study in schools like Lincoln, Galaxy and other top schools but as they join the bachelor’s level, parents say that their children have gone to Australia or the USA or other countries to study. They don’t praise the colleges in Nepal. However, we want to change that trend. We want to give the students such an environment that they wouldn’t  want to go to foreign lands to study”. He also shared his best experience at DWIT as the Director of Academic Affairs. “When I joined DWIT there were very few students. Some of them were so scared to do anything and rest were unaware what to do, but now, those students are the best programmers. They have become best not by studying just in class, but by doing self-study and hard work. Those who were afraid to write two lines of code have built software for the college and are still building other software,” said Mr. Karki. Nowadays we can see that everyone has mobiles on their hands and thankfully, Nepal is one of the developing countries having the highest mobile density. Hence, Mr. Karki wants to reach out to the general public through mobiles and help them solve their problems by making simple yet good applications. Everyone has their childhood dream, aspiration to become someone. We dream to become doctors, engineers, pilots or businessmen and women when we grow up. When anyone asks a child what he/she wants to become in the future, he/she would most probably reply that he/she wants to become a doctor or an engineer, but Mr. Karki dreamt of becoming a ticket seller at the cinema halls. As a child, he felt that the ticket seller had a great life; he could watch all the movies and could boss people around. He could order other people to sit wherever he wanted just to get a place he wants for himself. It was just a dream as a child but later he decided to do bigger, better things. We can consider “BBE- Bigger, Better and Efficient” to be his main motto. When asked about what keeps him going every day or what gives him a kick, he said, “Honestly, I never thought that I would be a part of a college but I am delighted to be here. Whenever I go out and share my idea about making DWIT the top college and a better IT college in Nepal, majority of people say that it is impossible to do so in a country like Nepal. This is the point that makes me keep on going. I never want to prove anything to anyone but to myself. I want to prove myself that I have done what I want. I don’t want to prove to others that I have made DWIT the number one college in Nepal, but I want to prove it to myself that I was right.”