CHENNAI: Classes will commence in August for the strapping new IIT-Tirupati and IIT-Palakkad campuses, which are each set to take in as many as 480 students. The institutes, which will be the 18th and 19th campuses of Indian Institute of Technology in the country, will be housed in a temporary campus offering four undergraduate programmes — Computer Science, Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering.
Enrolment for the 120 seats in each course will happen by the current protocol, the IITJEE exam filtering and counselling process.
Student intake is proposed to increase gradually, as the faculty pool widens. This announcement has been made ahead of the counselling process which is due to begin, last week of June.
Speaking on the pick of initial courses, IIT-Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said, “These are evergreen courses and are always in demand. Even the previously set up IITs started out with these courses.”
The half-century old IIT-Madras, which in the past mentored the new offspring in Hyderabad, will take both these universities under its wing as well.
As part of the mentorship plan, IIT-M will depute a batch of experienced professors including the ones recently retired, former deans and heads of various departments to the new campuses as both permanent and visiting professors.
Both campuses are housed temporarily — the IIT-Palakkad at Ahalia School of Engineering and Technology and the IIT-Tirupati at Chadalawada group of institutions. The permanent campuses which are pending land-acquisition is slated for completion in four years and will measure 500 acres each, area-wise.
“The temporary campuses and new campuses won’t be spared of any facility, be it classrooms, labs, hostels or mess.
So parents and IIT aspirants may have no fear of enrolling, as high standards are being met infrastructure-wise and teaching-wise,” Ramamurthy added. The new campuses to be built in-line with the Centre’s thrust on developing smart infrastructure in the country.
Noting that the Andhra Pradesh government is keen on the upcoming IIT campus, N Satyanarayana, professor in-charge of IIT-Tirupati said, “There is a push for industrial development along the Chennai-Tirupati belt, to boost the opportunities here.
More than a dozen Japanese industries and other prominent ones like Cadbury and Saint Gobain are set up here. The Tirupati airport is also being converted into an International airport and all this activity is happening close to the upcoming campus.”