SGTB Khalsa college notified as resource centre for chemistry

NEWDELHI: The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has notified Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur (SGTB) Khalsa College as the only national resource centre for chemistry.

Maintaining that it is the only college in the country to be given the responsibility of a core science subject like chemistry, officials said only one other college in the city — Ramanujan College — has been made into a resource centre for human rights, environment and ethics.

Last month, the MHRD had notified 75 national resource centres across the country, and each of them was given the responsibility of a specific subject. The resource centres were then asked to prepare online refresher training modules for higher education teachers for that particular subject.

R Subhramanyam, secretary, higher education, MHRD, said, “For the first time, we are making a systematic effort to reach all teachers with a capsule of knowledge that would improve their performances. The training module will include all the latest developments in the specific subject and improvements in pedagogy as well as methods to teach newer areas of the subject… However, we don’t want to make it compulsory this year. We will invite, encourage and nudge teachers to make use of the module in their own interest. It will be an annual affair from this year onwards.”

Vimal Rarh, joint director of the Guru Angad Dev Teaching Learning Centre at SGTB Khalsa College, said, “There are only two colleges in the list of 75 national resources centres – us and Ramanujan College. The rest are mostly central universities and institutes such as IITS, IISC etc. We are also the only college to be given a core science subject. We were selected on the basis of the work we have done previously.”

Chairman of the centre Professor AK Bakshi, who is also the vice-chancellor of PDM University, Bahadurgarh, said that prior to it being selected as the national resource centres, they had two centres at the college.

He maintained that SGTB Khalsa College was selected on the basis of the “success” of these centres. Centre for e-learning, an MHRD-UGC project, creates Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) for postgraduate subjects, and the GAD-TLC, MHRD’S centre under Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching, runs faculty induction programmes.

The secretary of higher education at MHRD also said they had given an open call to all HRD centres at universities to express their willingness, and they were selected accordingly.

With a well-equipped studio complete with a green screen, the national resource centre at the college would be able to shoot videos, enhance them with graphics and upload them for the refresher courses.