With your university’s specific focus on NEP 2020, have the teachers been trained?
This was our first priority, because what we are trying to do is slightly different. To fall in place with the aspirations of NEP, we thought, first we should have a thorough training of our faculty. We had a 10-day training module for all the faculty once they were on board. In the first three days, the entire staff of the university was part of the training programme because we look at everyone as an educator. We don’t distinguish when it comes to teaching or non-teaching staff. After that, they were trained separately based on the skill requirement. For the students too, the first one week was used for preparing them for the new way of learning, when they came on board on August 22. We understand that continuous training exposure for our staff and counselling and guidance for our students is required when you do something different.
How will the university support students financially while securing admission?
There are two-three stated objectives for the university. We don’t want to be considered simply as an elite university and look only at those kind of students. We want to encourage and accept students who have studied in regional languages and who come from rural backgrounds. We have a mentoring system, both from the faculty and from the industry, for these students. There are varieties of scholarships that will support them. Right now, some 20 students have got 100 percent scholarship -- they do not pay any fee or any hostel expenses. It is purely based on their socio-economic background and merit. Other students have received different slabs of freeships and scholarships. For some, only fees are waived off and they meet their living expenses by themselves. We started with the idea of 75 scholarships to celebrate 75 years of Independence but practically all our students have got one or the other benefit - either scholarship or freeship.
How will the values of “Indian knowledge system” be inculcated into your curriculum?
We are following different strategies. The Indian knowledge system is too broad an idea. We need to look at specificities. It should not be looked at as if it is simply going back to old traditions. We need it to be useful to address today’s problems and challenges. Ideas regarding local culture and practices, lifestyle, and respect for nature can be looked at. We have a high research focus in this area because we don’t have ready-made things to be inculcated into the curriculum. We need to cull out elements and pick up those that are relevant for today. We have started doing this wherever possible. It is much easier to integrate in some disciplines like Social Sciences. In Psychology, too, we have a paper on Indian Psychology. We also have a foundation course, titled Indian Intellectual Heritage. There is research work going on with respect to political philosophies while looking at the current international relations dynamics. These are on our research domain and only after research, will they be inculcated into the curriculum. In our eagerness to teach, we should not teach something that is not relevant for today.
With many private universities up and running, how is your campus planning to be different?
We are currently on rented premises as the campus is just coming up and we will shift next academic year. During that time, Phase 1A of the campus will be ready that includes all the infrastructure to house 1,500 students and the related faculty.
The plan is that over a period of time, integration of technology will happen in terms of the physical infrastructure. The central focus is on the knowledge centre which is much beyond a library. It is more of a repository. It is not just that students will have access to what is in our centre but we have collaborated and tied up with other organisations in India and abroad to be able to facilitate resources from those centres as well. Such a technology-driven knowledge repository is going to be created. This is a central system as our idea is that resources should be made available to everyone.
In terms of our entire governance and administration too, an IT committee has been put in place right from the beginning, which is planning the digital integration of all our activities in a phased manner. From admission to exit, everything related to students is integrated with technology. Our academic Learning Management System (LMS), assessment and everything related to HR management are all going to be technologically integrated. We want to ensure that technology is an integral part of the whole process. So, our portal is going to be dynamic.
On the study and research front too, we have begun with a technologically integrated programme in our School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Our faculty is drawn from renowned institutes. We have a high focus on data science, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, like other universities do as well. We have put in place courses and programmes related to all this.