From offering new programs in Humanities, Design and Management in 2023, to reviewing the entire curriculum, enhancing the overall student experience, driving social impact, providing technological solutions for better healthcare and establishing campus infrastructure and fostering the innovation ecosystem. IIT Abu Dhabi, IIT-Delhi director Rangan Banerjee has his hands full till 2024.
In an interview with News18.com, Banerjee talks at length about her vision for the institute, internationalization and the new NEP. Edited excerpts:
You said earlier that being “multidisciplinary” is the key to a good institution. How is IIT-Delhi progressing in this direction? Any new program?
Over the last five years, we have grown from being primarily a purely science and engineering institute to a truly multidisciplinary institute with courses like Masters in Humanities and Social Sciences, Economics and Public Policy.
Last year, we started a new course – Bachelors in Design – and now we plan to offer B.Tech in Design from the new financial year. In addition, we plan to offer new academic programs such as Masters in Humanities, which are yet to be formulated. Apart from this, we are also going through a complete curriculum review.
In the existing programmes, we are building multi-disciplinarity through a varied set of offerings and are looking at the possibilities of offering minors. We already have a department of management studies so we are thinking of offering integrated programs where people can study both B.Tech and MBA. This is still a work in progress. Hence, multi-discipline is the key to holistic education where people can get an all-round approach apart from specialization.
What is your vision for the Institute in the next four years as the Head of the Institute? Do you plan to make any improvements?
The challenge for us is the young undergraduates – to excite and engage them in their core discipline and to sustain it through the course. This is a challenge faced in all engineering and science institutions around the world. We are looking for ways in which we can provide our students with opportunities for ‘learning by doing’, creating possibilities for immersion by looking at real life problems.
We have the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, which is led by IIT-Delhi, where we are connected to more than 16,000 villages and people have opportunities to spend two months in the village and do internships to identify problems. We also want to see that we encourage students to convert their ideas of entrepreneurship and incubation into real start-ups and enhance the possibilities. For this, we have come up with a scheme with alumni entrepreneurs to help fund start-ups of final year students who are working on such projects. So, we want to see that we enhance the overall student experience.
Moreover, even though we have one of the best innovation ecosystems in the country, a lot more can be done. We also plan to re-imagine the infrastructure as a 60-year-old institution. We have plans to expand our hostel capacity. At present, we have more than 12,000 students in our campus while the total hostel capacity is only 7,000.
Can you elaborate on the recent IIT-Delhi collaboration with AIIMS and other health facilities, what it aims for and how it is progressing.
We are trying to bring together groups of faculty to work in different areas where we can increase our social impact. This tie-up with AIIMS as well as National Cancer Institute is one such step. The coming together of technology and medicine aims to fill the gaps in healthcare services by offering better and lower cost technological solutions. We are planning to make AIIMS-Jhajjar a healthcare hub with personalized medicine and digital facilities. We are planning to set up an organoid facility here. There are only a few such facilities in the world.
We are also looking at technological solutions for sports performance, injury prevention and assistive technology. We have a lot of work to do on biomechanics, sensors and monitoring. We want to give that extra edge to Indian players through technology. This is a new domain that we are going to start where we are also planning to offer some postgraduate programs. In November 2022, we made a presentation in front of the Chief Minister of Haryana and he liked it very much. Now, we just need to go ahead and fund the infrastructure and research needed. In the next three to four years, this will be a major thrust area.
What is your view on the internationalization of higher education with the recently released UGC regulations allowing top foreign universities to open branch campuses in India?
I would not like to comment on the rules. However, when we say internationalization, our preference for all kinds of cooperation is a two-way process. IIT-Delhi is helping to set up an IIT in Abu Dhabi, which will start its academic programs from 2024.
new national Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes on teaching in mother tongue or home language. Engineering books have been launched in regional languages like Marathi and Oriya and will be published in other languages as well. Since students from every part of the country study together in IITs, how do you plan to implement this?
this is true. At IIT, we have students from every corner on the map of the country. The diversity of a class is our strength. We provide support to the students and have foundational courses to help them overcome any kind of language barrier. If regional language translations are available for some of the major textbooks, these books can help in providing better support. We will ensure that no student should face any problem in studies due to language barrier.
Given the grim global economic outlook for 2023, with major tech firms on a spree of layoffs, how has the placement season for the institute been so far?
Has been reasonably good. The institute has received its highest ever job offers for 2022-23. As of 15 December, students received 1,300 job offers, including international placements. The placement will go on till May, so we are yet to see how the rest of the things pan out.
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