IIT Ropar to involve Punjabi diaspora in its programmes
RUPNAGAR Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Ropar, will involve Punjabi diaspora in its various programmes and image building at the international level, said the institute’s director, Prof Sarit Kumar Das, while talking to HT on Monday.
“We have formed a council of global associates of IIT Ropar, which comprises Punjabi diaspora. It will start functioning from September this year, when its meeting will be held in Canada,” said Prof Das.
He said they were seeking the help of Punjabi diaspora for various specials programmes and they had shown interest in helping the institute through funding and image building.
Reiterating his commitment to recruit best faculty at IIT Ropar, Prof Das said a lot of high quality faculty had joined the institute from India and abroad.
He said that a high level team of the institute will visit Austrailia and Singapore from April 22 to May 3 for offshore recruitment of faculty and for collaboration with the foreign universities.
He said the strength of the faculty in the institute had crossed 100 for the first time and by July this year it would touch 120.The number of students would also increase from present 800 to 1,200 by that time.There was a target of increasing students’ strength to 2,500 by 2019 , he added.
SEATS OF COURSES TO BE INCREASED, 2 NEW COURSES FROM NEXT SESSION
Prof Das said the intake of various existing courses, including computer science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering was being increased from the next session and courses of chemical engineering and bio medical engineering were also being introduced.
He said that this year they had launched two new schemes. One was faculty summer visitation programme and the other was paid student internship programme.
“Under paid student internship programme, we are offering about 200 internships to students of nearby engineering colleges.These student would stay in IIT campus for two months and they would be paid ₹5,000 per month. They would work with the faculty of IIT ,” Das said.
“The programmes had been launched so that the whole region could get the benefit of the institute and in future if they want to do post graduation, this would be their destination,” he said.
Also, under the faculty summer visitation programme, 10 faculty members would be sent to various top universities of the world for spending about 6-10 weeks, so that they could see what was happening and what kind of research was being done there, which could be useful in teaching back home.
He said that construction work of the new campus of the institute was going on in full swing and was confident that they would start using a part of the campus from new semester in August.