About

The Professional Development Centre (PDC) is one of the centers at UCSC, established to keep a close liaison with the IT industry to improve the academic activities through industry-academia partnership. The mission of the Professional Development Center is to produce socially responsible professionals with entrepreneurial skills, leadership qualities, and integrity. The center facilitates training programs to improve the professional skills of both the academic staff and the undergraduates. The PDC invites the IT industry to conduct awareness programs such as current trends in the IT industry, industrial practices, career paths in various disciplines, and, thus, creating value addition to enhance overall graduate quality and employability.Main activities conducted by the Professional Development Center includes,

  • Tech Talks

Industry sessions conducted by professionals on technologies and practices currently being applied in the industry. Students in their 3rd year of undergraduate study are required to participate in these sessions to get an idea of the skills they should acquire before joining the industry.

  • Industrial Placement Program

A 5-6 months program, where the students will be placed in different IT companies (registered under UCSC internship program) to give the exposure on the practical use of the knowledge they have acquired from the university curriculum. At the end of this period, students will be evaluated on their progress/achievements.

  • Industrial Placement Monitoring Program

A team from UCSC will visit the places where the interns are placed after 2/3 months of their internship. During this visit, UCSC will get the opportunity to monitor the progress of the interns and to discuss any issues from the perspective of the student/company.

Activities

2020

  • The final industry placement evaluations were carried out for the academic year 2019/2020.
  • A selection committee was appointed and facilitated the evaluation to select the best candidate for the award of “Best Performance in Industrial Placement – 2019.”.
  • Student feedback was collected concerning industry placements carried-out in 2019.
  • The mentoring program was initiated with the IT industry for the 2nd year students (Discussions/email awareness were made but unable to implement it due to the pandemic situation).
  • The newly registered companies under the UCSC internship program were interviewed via Zoom (Number of New Companies for the year 2020 – 38 ).
  • Two hundred ninety-one (291) students were placed in 89 IT companies and 8 UCSC Projects under the undergraduate internship program for the academic year 2020/2021.
  • Fifteen (15) different professionals were invited from the IT industry to conduct tech talks for the 3rd-year undergraduates via the zoom due to the pandemic situation.
  • Eighteen (18) video recorded tech-talks from the IT industry professionals were received and made available for the 3rd year undergraduates to improve their technical/professional skills.
  • A Lunchtime Seminar was organized for staff members and 4th-year students on “Deep Learning for Computer Vision”. This session was conducted by Prof. N.D. Kodikara, Senior Professor, UCSC.
  • Separate meetings were organized with the head of directors of ISM APAC (PVT) LTD, LSEG (PVT) LTD to discuss the potential collaboration to reduce the gap between the academia and the industry.
  • A research discussion among Creative Software, 4th-year undergraduates, and UCSC academic staff was facilitated to uplift the research culture with academic-industry collaboration.
  • Organized/Facilitated a session on research and development for UCSC academic staff and 4th-year undergraduates. The WSO2 conducted this session.
  • Several web banners, Competitions, Online sessions organized by the IT industry were published and encouraged students to participate in the sessions during the lockdown period due to the pandemic situation.
  • Organized/Facilitated the ‘Digital Discoverer Program’ initiated by Virtusa. Eight (8) online sessions were conducted for both internal/external undergraduates in UCSC.
  • The PDC assisted the UCSC career fair organizing committee – 2020 in organizing the virtual event.
  • Several meetings were conducted with professionals from the IT industry to enhance the industry-academia partnership.
  • Several student issues and inquiries were handled throughout the year.

 

2019

  • The final industry placement evaluations were carried out for the academic year 2018/2019.
  • Student feedback was collected with respect to industry placements carried-out in 2018.
  • A selection committee was appointed and facilitated the evaluation to select the best candidate for the award of “Best Performance in Industrial Placement – 2018.”
  • The PDC staff members visited the newly registered companies under the UCSC internship program.
  • Undergraduate internship placements were handled, and a total of 245 students were placed in 71 IT companies and 9 UCSC Projects.
  • Fifteen (15) different professionals were invited from the IT industry to conduct tech talks for the 3rd-year undergraduates.
  • The PDC assisted the organizing committee of the UCSC career fair – 2019, in organizing the event.
  • Industry placement monitoring visits were organized to monitor the progress of the interns and to discuss any issues on industry placement.
  • Staff members participated in the “Quality engineering industry meetup with the academia” organized by Pearson Lanka.
  • Several students/interns were nominated to participate in events organized by the industry (Tech Summit 2019 & Quality Quest 2019, Pearson Quality Quest 2019, Quality Engineering Professional – University Student Workshop, Pearson TechSummit 2019)
  • An industrial visit to Cambio Labs was organized, and twenty-five (25) 4th-year students participated in the visit.
  • Several meetings were conducted with professionals of the IT industry to enhance the industry-academia partnership.
  • Several student issues and inquiries were handled throughout the year.

2018

  • The final industry placement evaluations were carried out for the academic year 2017/2018.
  • Student feedback was collected with respect to industry placements carried-out in 2017.
  • A selection committee was appointed and facilitated the evaluation to select the best candidate for the award of “Best Performance in Industrial Placement – 2017.”
  • Mock interviews were organized with the industry collaboration for 3rd-year undergraduates.
  • Undergraduate internship placements were handled, and a total of 238 students were placed in 69 companies.
  • IT professionals were invited from the industry to conduct tech talks for the 3rd-year undergraduates.
  • The PDC assisted the organizing committee of the UCSC career fair – 2018, in organizing the event.
  • Industry placement monitoring program was introduced to monitor the progress of the interns and to discuss any issues on industry placement.
  • An in-house industrial workshop at ISM APAC (PVT) LTD was organized, and several interns and staff members have participated in the event.
  • Several student issues and inquiries were handled throughout the year

Tech Talks

2020

Online Tech Talk Sessions for UCSC 3rd year Undergraduates

Date Topic Company Name No of participants
Jun 8, 2020 Governing an ERP Initiative Ernst & Young 235
Jun 10, 2020 CV writing session 99x Technology (PVT) Ltd 220
Jun 11, 2020 CV writing session GT – nexus (PVT) LTD 220
Jun 12, 2020 CV writing session SimCentric Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. 220
Jun 17, 2020 Coming out from the Shell Ascentic Technologies 220
Jun 18, 2020 Creating repositories, cloning, branching, committing, push, pull, checkout, merge & tagging Acuity Knowledge Partners 100
Jun 29, 2020 Bridging-The-Digital-Divide-of-Sri-Lanka Aasa IT Solutions 100
Jul 2, 2020 session on interview facing Virtusa (PVT) Ltd 220
Jul 17, 2020 Career Guidance & Interview preparation Dialog Axiata 185
Jul 30, 2020 Session On Mobile Development. Sysco LABS 65
Jul 31, 2020 Career Guidance & new trends in industry Sysco LABS 45
Cloud-Native Application Development with AWS Persistent Systems (PVT) LTD 195

 

Recorded Tech Talk Sessions for UCSC 3rd year Undergraduates

Topic Company Name
Application Security Introduction Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
basic Salesforce Development Cams Software
Career Development and Different Opportunities In It Industry LSEG
Docker Everything you Should Know to start Virtusa (PVT) Ltd
Git Basis Creative Software
Git Bitbucket Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Introduction to API Design IronOne Technologies
Introduction to API Testing Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Introduction to Generative Adversarial Networks Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Introduction to Mobile Application testing Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Introduction_To QA Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Kaas hSenid Mobile solution
Maven Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Performance Testing Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Test Design Techniques Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
UI Automation Using Selenium WebDriver Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited
Unit Testing For beginners Creative Software
Web Accessibility Testing Pearson Lanka (Private) Limited

Tech Talks conducted under Digital Discovery Program by Virtusa for both internal/external undergraduates

Date Session Facilitator
Dec 2, 2020 CV writing skills Mr. Suweda Rajaratnam
Dec 4, 2020 Introduction to Salesforce Mr. Jen Brenda
Dec 7, 2020 Interview facing Skills Mr. Aniston Leo
Dec 9, 2020 AI/ML Ms. Chathusha Wijenayake
Dec 21, 2020 Presenting Skills Mr. Hingston Lovell
Dec 18, 2020 PM methodologies Mr. Lahiru Ratnapala

Employability Statics

2020

Programme Number Graduated Number  Responded Employed Waiting for Jobs / Not interested
Bachelor of Computer Science 159 116 95% 5%
Bachelor of Information Systems 91 72 85% 15%
 Total 250 188 90% 10%

2019

Programme Number Graduated Number  Responded Employed Waiting for Jobs / Not interested
Bachelor of Computer Science 156 135 93% 7%
Bachelor of Information Systems 81 80 94% 6%
 Total 237 215 93% 7%

New Company Registration

The new company registrations for UCSC, Industry partnership, are now open for those interested in the programs below, organized by the Professional Development Center (PDC) in UCSC.

  • Tech Talks: Industry sessions conducted by professionals from the industry on current trends and technologies. These sessions are offered to third-year undergraduates to get exposure to the required skills before joining the industry.
  • Industrial Placement Program: The internship program is offered to both Computer Science(CS) and Information Systems (IS) undergraduates in their third year second semester. This is a 5-6 months program. The students will be placed in different IT companies (registered under the UCSC internship program) to give exposure to the practical use of the knowledge acquired from the university curriculum. The next batch of interns will be available tentatively from mid-August 2021.

Please register with us by filling the google form below.

[Google Form] New Company Registration: https://forms.gle/MDoSWW7YJA1xt4859

For further clarifications contact us via:

Staff Memebers

Coordinator

Support Staff

  • Ms. BMW Dhanawardana (Instructor In Computer Technology)

Contact

Address:

Professional Development Centre,
University of Colombo School of Computing,
35, Reid Avenue, Colombo 7
Sri Lanka

Telephone:

+94 -011-2158912 / 2158969

Email:

pdc@ucsc.cmb.ac.lk