CHENNAI: After gaining the prestigious Institutions of Eminence (IoE) tag, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM) is now focusing to add more foreign students and faculty members to its campus.
Officials in IITM said the institute is chalking out a special strategy to attract more students from overseas. It has decided to organize outreach and awareness programs in reputed universities across the globe to attract high performing students.
The institute will also promote its center of excellences along with researches and innovation carried out by different departments to draw foreign students to IITM for research activities.
Mahesh Panchagnula, Dean (International and Alumni relations) of IITM, said the presence of foreign students and faculty members is necessary on the campus in order to make it more diverse.
Along with encouraging innovation and research activities, the presence of foreign students and faculty will also help in improving the global rankings of the institute, he said.
Many faculty members of IITM have been co-authoring multiple research papers for different journals with foreign academicians.
The institute wants such foreign faculty members to work with them over a long period of time, said an official from IITM.
“We participate in different education fairs organised overseas, but now we aim to intensify the process by participating in more such events. In such fairs, we will also advertise about the fellowships provided by the institute and the Centre for foreign students,” said Panchagnula.
Presently, there are over 100 foreign students on IITM campus but authorities have plans to increase the figure significantly by next year.
As per the IoE scheme, IITM will receive a fund of Rs 1000 crore for a period of five years from the Centre and the institute aims to utilize it in improving its infrastructure to accommodate foreign students and faculty and improve its research activities.
IITM officials said as the undergraduate course admission structure is done on basis of national entrance test, the prime focus now will be to attract post-graduate and PhD students from abroad.