{"id":948,"date":"2026-10-15T08:49:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T08:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/?p=948"},"modified":"2026-10-15T08:49:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T08:49:22","slug":"alpesh-adesaras-silver-jubilee-twenty-five-reasons-to-keep-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/2026\/10\/15\/alpesh-adesaras-silver-jubilee-twenty-five-reasons-to-keep-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpesh Adesara’s Silver Jubilee: Twenty-Five Reasons to Keep Going\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Alpesh Adesara<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a Sunday morning in Ahmedabad, and while most of the city eased into the weekend, Alpesh Adesara walked into an exam centre with a freshly printed hall ticket in hand. He had arrived fifteen minutes before the reporting time, just in time to take one of his two NPTEL exams that day. He had slept barely a few hours, but weeks of lectures and assignments had already done their work – the knowledge was there, load-bearing and ready to be tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By designation, Alpesh Adesara is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at SAL Institute of Technology and Engineering Research in Gujarat. He has been teaching for 21 years, and SAL has been his academic home for the past decade. In its corridors, colleagues and students know him not only by his title, but also for the way his NPTEL journey has become part of his professional identity: a sustained commitment to learning and to bringing that learning back into the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That journey began, as many things did, during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdown. Alone with his thoughts, Alpesh began to wonder: What else could he learn? How could he continue to grow, strengthen his career, and better serve his students? He also carried a silent regret – the missed opportunity to pursue his Master’s at an IIT. When he found NPTEL, the platform gave shape to the wish he had carried for years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also challenged a belief he had encountered: that learning begins to slow once an academician crosses forty. He wanted to prove otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the world returned to a regular rhythm, he had registered for his first two courses, setting in motion a journey that would eventually lead to his twenty-fifth course – a personal \u201cSilver Jubilee\u201d of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It did not take long for those first enrolments to change the structure of his teaching. For an academician with twenty years in the classroom, it is easy to fall back on familiar notes and standard examples. NPTEL disrupted that cycle. The lectures offered him new ways to explain concepts and technical nuances that standard textbooks did not always explore in depth. He began to embed these “tricks” into his own lectures, giving students an exposure to technical learning they would not find elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These efforts were noticed far beyond his own desk. Alpesh recalls the surprise of completing his tenth course and receiving an email that introduced him to the world of NPTEL Stars. Suddenly, he was not just a learner; he was a \u2018Motivated Learner\u2019, a two-time \u2018NPTEL Believer\u2019, and a \u2018Discipline Star.\u2019 These recognitions eventually led him to IIT Bombay for the NPTEL Star Meet, where Alpesh finally sat among the professors he had only known through a screen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His home institute, SAL, soon acknowledged this momentum too – honouring him with the \u2018Academic Achiever\u2019 award. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recognition felt personal, but it also reached beyond him – to colleagues who encouraged him, students who followed his lead, and a campus that had started to make room for NPTEL in its own rhythm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classroom had not changed much in twenty-one years. The chalk, board, and rows of students waiting. What had changed was what his twenty-fifth course meant to him. It was no longer a number to count; it was proof that the barrier he once read about could be crossed after all, until the work of learning felt like part of who he was. On that Sunday morning, as he stepped into the exam centre, he was carrying not a missed dream but the shape of a different one – one he had built for himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~written by Nehansh Kesarwani<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alpesh Adesara It was a Sunday morning in Ahmedabad, and while most of the city eased into the weekend, Alpesh Adesara walked into an exam centre with a freshly printed hall ticket in hand. He had arrived fifteen minutes before the reporting time, just in time to take one of his two NPTEL exams that … <\/p>\n

Read more “Alpesh Adesara’s Silver Jubilee: Twenty-Five Reasons to Keep Going\u00a0“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}