VISAKHAPATNAM : If everything goes as planned, Andhra University is going to launch ‘Centre for Japanese Language and Culture’ on its campus in two months. Japan-based Mitsubishi corporation had already granted `27 lakh for establishing the centre.
AU vice-chancellor GSN Raju speaking to TNIE said that officials from the Mitsubishi Corporation had approached the varsity officials for setting up the Centre and the latter immediately accepted the proposal. The V-C also said that they would start a one-year diploma course in Japanese at the centre. “We have already identified a place for the centre in the department of Social Studies block. We have decided on an intake of 30 students for now,” said Raju, adding “We have also identified a teacher for the centre and will be officially appointing him soon.”
According to the AU authorities, the centre would host classes thrice a week. He said that initially one teacher would be taking the classes and if required in future, they would consider hiring more staff. Already German and French language centres have been functioning on the campus for the last one year.
More Collaborations in Pipeline
The AU is likely to collaborate with the prestigious Kansas University of the USA for a dual degree programme MSc (Bio-chemistry).
The V-C said that the it was their honour to collaborate with Kansas University whose research on rare diseases is acclaimed worldwide. He also said that even the AU had come up with some international publications and the collaboration would let the students pursue a two-year course with one year in the city and one year abroad, where the student would have degrees from both universities.
Besides, the university authorities have invited V-Cs from several universities of Australia to discuss the possibility of a few more collaborations. GSN Raju said that he was expecting four V-Cs from universities across Australia by next month and they would have a meet in which they would decide about the collaborations.
